Have you heard the one about the newly arrived immigrant in Ireland seeking employment? (country omitted to avoid international scandal) Learning English in the evenings, he works in the mornings collecting bins at the heath of metropolitan Dublin…ooh la la…Upon reaching the end of his first row of bins one morning he finds the last house has not placed a bin for collection. Being a diligent and conscientious fellow (as can be expected of any nationality, because there’s no prejudice here thank you very much) he enters the back garden and knocks on the back door. A large chap, deeply browned by something not found in Ireland, answers in a pair of boxer shorts and demands to know the reason for the wake up call (bins collected at 5 am and all that). ‘Where you bin?’ enquired our friend. Delighted to be asked, the browned demi-god replies, ‘Majorca for two weeks.’
And that was that for her career as an international comedian, however her career as international researcher puddles along. Submitting research bids to explore child development in extreme situations such as child soldiers and children living in refugee camps. Thesis submitted end of May, and the VIVA is set for end of October owing to a delay while she works as behavioral consultant (and gardener, fisherman, laundress, engineer, cook, director, psychosocial counselor and anything they need) for a rehabilitation center for children abducted by the LRA in DRC. You should be hearing about it soon enough over Tesco Croissants (I never said there was anything wrong with them!) and the Sunday Times courtesy of AA Gill soon enough.
Be good and then turn around and be better.
Tomorrow I pick up the hard copy drafts from my three wise supervisors. I’ll hopefully begin making the final edits this week and have the thesis all ready for Jan 16th 2013. In the mean time though, I complete jobs apps (which no doubt at least 50 others are also applying for, and the job is already most likely ear marked for someone anyway), apply for research grants for projects I think would be beneficial and doable, and giggle of giggles for a book publisher for a nice little series of narratives on Irish occupational roles with a twist using my beloved IPA. As I’m doing this, I feel a stinging lump of empathy for other students writing methodologies and trying to hook a PhD placement for themselves. So, I have an idea for you, if you are interested in behavioural interventions and anthrozoology as I am. In my findings how the companionship between the child and their assistance dog develops, suggests that some operant principles of behaviour are applied by parents, (possibly subconsciously). This has possible implications for how to categorise and evaluate other assistance dog programs. In applying this area into a potential area for future research could explore whether the applied operant principles of behaviour make assistance dogs a behavioural intervention. If anyone is interested, fingers crossed I’d be in a position to supervise by the end of January.
Handing in drafts of my thesis today to each of my supervisors. Hopefully this will give them and myself a chance to check the thesis more than twice for anything too ludicrous. I am curious about their future feedback on my main conclusions – and in particular the emphasis I have placed on changing perceptions in participants, which were not previously identified in anecdotes and extant research. The interest for me was really about what participants’ saw as a positive outcome. And there’s certainly some room for discussion on the meaning of therapy to the service user as much as to the researcher, when any therapy is being evaluated. For my participants expectations for changes in development were core to their meaning making of what constituted a therapeutic outcome. The individuality of each environment steered the experience of therapy for participants and also their expectations for interventions like assistance dogs.
With the patience of saints and the wisdom of the ages, my supervisors are guiding me on the last two months of my thesis before I submit (aiming for January 16th). In doing my rereading I came across a certain point that might be interesting to share with you. At a certain point in their narratives, parents began to consider the impact of developmental trajectories. In fact, overall in hopes and expectations for the future parents targeted the development of their children rather than any specific symptom or behaviour. In doing this, some of the gaps I see in research projects – a lack of applied understanding of developmental disability and a lack of specific outcome measures – might be addressed. Initially dogs here were adopted to target those symptoms and behaviours specific to developmental disability, however in extending these expectations parents used day to day observations and significant events in language, communication, social engagement, as well as more neurotypical behaviours including social exploration (nosiness), and social interests (e.g. asking if a sibling was okay after a fall). In addition, as these placements progressed parents also considered the role of the environment on their children’s learning.
Should make for some interesting reading in my submitted thesis and hopefully publications and conferences next year. Will let you know.
A big congratulations to my colleague at Alliant University, Genevieve Bartuski. She has just been nominated by her faculty – Forensic and Clinical Psychology – to go to South Africa in January for two weeks. She’ll be working with the police there, observing autopsies and generally being brilliant!
Presentation for CARP at Coventry University’s Psychology Department went very well last Wednesday. I had a very nice PowerPoint all about my findings from the last few years on the evidence base surrounding assistance dogs, which then led into my own research findings from an international survey with some service providers and my recent write ups on ethnographic (and wonderfully detailed thanks to the quality of input from the participants) case studies. The psychologists and researchers who attended engaged in a dialogue with me that added to my own knowledge and understanding of my research findings. There was a diverse range of training and experience in the room, including positivists, and I had a little window of opportunity to defend the ethnographic findings as authentic research outcomes, which incidentally was a lovely bit of preparation for the VIVA. More globally, I was left with the reminder/reinforced impression that psychology can have an impact on service provision for people and families affected by developmental disability. The discussion we had had been about using evidence-based practice to best effect, which regardless of subjective values or research stance, even positivism, should start with a rigorous research methodology that you can defend.
If I had one of those new things I hear the kids call ‘Phones’ I would have posted all the lovely people I have been speaking with in the past few weeks about assistance dogs and hopefully an up an coming project on children’s development in refugee camps. But, I don’t want to miss a chance to say that TODAY I am presenting at James Starley Building at Coventry University on the findings from my PhD. Presentation all ready, and poster looks snazzy. Hopefully we will get a nice dialogue going and I might get some practice for my VIVA.
I am hoping very much to have a draft of my thesis ready for my supervisory team with enough time before Christmas so that they can get a feedback to me by Christmas. And though I am having a few wording issues which I hope to resolve (hope, a wonderful word for a research student), I am reading again over my participants’ interviews. It was living with a child with developmental disability which unified these narratives, and their common experiences in language delay, in the constancy of having to manage environment, the dual roles of their parenting, were the factors which gives the assistance dog experience meaning. Findings suggest to me that parents living and working with developmental disability use an interpretive framework, based on history of less than successful in home interventions, stressors associated with parenting a child with developmental disability, and their own parental expertise, when assessing the positive and negative outcomes associated with any home intervention, including assistance dogs. It strikes a chord again, that regardless of the money invested into designing, implementing and evaluating any intervention using research techniques or otherwise, an intervention’s success – whether it meets a need – seems almost always to depend on the people involved in the day to day living.
Only a few days after the jubilant end of the Paralympics, another parent and child with multiple disabilities found in what appears to be a ‘we’ll go out together’ situation. Though, I would be delighted if I was wrong. I can’t help but think what needs to change, what the point is of all this research I have to read, and will hopefully conduct, and I can’t but think that this change has to be education for all, professionals, parents, children and the public.
Most social aspects of their children’s behaviour are allegorical. Each episode of age contact, touch, inquisition on their part, is a token of huge social growth. They portray learning for parents, but these, perhaps heightened, perceptions are sometimes tokens of learning. We live in a world where learning means two different things. Ideology of a future within a neurotypical development, and the implied expectations for children with developmental disability. Neurotypical children are constantly engaging with their environment, and thus their learning, whereas the atypical children’s learning is dependent on their parent’s role as first point of contact with the everyday world. As with Gillberg’s (2011) description of developmental disabilities as ESSENCE (a collection of behaviours needing specific attention depending upon each child), participants experienced living with children with developmental disabilities as something highly complex and fluctuating; it might also be experienced as something in need of support on multiple levels to reflect this complexity and fluctuation. In this way, the public could act as that very same much needed intervention. A changed dynamic with the public could result in a change in how people with developmental disability live their lives – impacting their own self-perceptions. Drawing out of this possible reality there are delicate scenes described in research papers, and in the media, where children engage in activities that their parents had previously removed from their hopes and expectations. Is it such a leap to ask the public, all people in general to get on board and change their perceptions and expectations too?
Assistance Dogs for Developmental Disability Research 