Samhandling om tjenester til personer med utviklingshemming og samtidig psykiske lidelser/ plager: Hvilke erfaringer har deres foreldre?

Abstract

National as well as international research shows that people with mental retardation are more prone to develop mental ailments and behavioral problems then the general population. Still, little subject material illuminates the collaboration of services provided to this group of people. The purpose of this study is to explore how the parents of people with mental retardation and simultaneous mental illnesses/ ailments perceive the collaboration of services provided to their offspring: What are their experiences on collaboration between the different service providers? How do they view collaboration between themselves/ their offspring and service providers? Which factors may, according to the parents, facilitate and prevent collaboration? The research question is as follows: Collaboration of services provided to people with mental retardation and simultaneous presence of mental illnesses/ailments: What are their parents’ experiences? The study has a qualitative research approach, with in-depth interviews of four guardians. The analysis method used is Systematic Text Condensation. The findings show that the parents have little knowledge of collaboration amongst the service providers. They do express a recent improvement of the collaboration between themselves/ their offspring and the service providers. Even so, the parents feel that the services today are poorly coordinated and not easily accessible. According to the parents, the use of power and communication might facilitate and prevent collaboration. The study concludes that the parents know less about the collaboration between service providers than they do about their direct collaboration with these. The parents illuminate positive and negative sides of the latter, as well as factors that might facilitate and prevent collaboration. Keywords: Qualitative study, service-collaboration, mental retardation, mental illness/-ailment, parents.