Living with Disability Research Centre Online Seminar Series

Presentations from two of our centre’s PhD candidates

This seminar showcases the research of two of the Living with Disability Research Centre’s PhD candidates, Kangwei Xun and Charity Sims-Jenkins, who both have backgrounds in social work. Kangwei’s project analyses governmental responses to ageing with intellectual disabilities in Hong Kong. Charity’s project investigates how Australian disability support staff support people's choices.

The seminar will take lace online via Zoom.

Please email lids@latrobe.edu.au to register.

More of the Same: A Document Analysis of the Government’s Responses to Ageing with Intellectual Disabilities in Hong Kong

Kangwei Xun, PhD Candidate, Living with Disability Research Centre, La Trobe University

As the population of people ageing with intellectual disabilities grew in the 1980s, the Hong Kong government supported research that explored their needs and recommended a range of initiatives.

This study aimed to identify how, since that time, the government has understood and responded to the ‘problem’ of people ageing with intellectual disabilities. A total of 53 documents published between 2004 and 2024 were analysed, including reports, funding agreements, financial budgets, and policy recommendations.

Findings show that people ageing with intellectual disabilities are portrayed as experiencing physical decline and premature ageing, and their families as having limited capacity to meet their increasing care needs. With few exceptions, government policies have not pursued specialist programs targeted at ageing people or their families. Rather, policies have enhanced the capacity of general services for adults with intellectual disabilities to address health care needs, the capacity of parental caregivers through education and allowances, and alleviated parental anxiety about future care through the establishment of a special trust. It indicates that the government has continued a policy trajectory established in 1980s that emphasises lifelong care and protection of people with intellectual disabilities rather than promoting community inclusion and independent living for them.

Looking beyond goals to support people's choices

Charity Sims-Jenkins, PhD Candidate, Living with Disability Research Centre, La Trobe University

Well-meaning disability support staff can limit people’s choices despite aiming to support them. This PhD study explored why this happens and what is needed to support choice well. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 21 disability support staff using vignettes to explore about how they would support people with intellectual disabilities to make choices. These data were analysed using grounded theory methods.

Two different ways of supporting choice were identified among staff - a process focus and a goal focus. Staff with a process focus approached support by looking for a spectrum of choices that a person might make, looking beyond choices about goals to choices over the processes for reaching goals and how they wanted to be supported.  In contrast staff with a goal focus limited choices to those directly associated with defining a goal. 

The findings show that a process focus by staff is likely to provide better support for choices. The findings cast doubt over the Stereotype Content Model’s explanation for why well-meaning staff limit choices and suggests that how staff think about support is more important than how they think about the person. Those staff that think about support more broadly than simply about reaching goals are less likely to limit choice.