Family Members of Adults with Intellectual Disability Living in Residential Settings: Roles and Collaboration with Professionals. A Review of the Literature

Abstract

The aim of this article is to review the literature concerning the role of family members of adults with an intellectual disability living in diverse residential settings and their collaboration with residential staff. Whenever the scarce literature on the subject allowed, the focus was laid on family members of persons with additional challenging behavior. Electronic databases, reference screening, and hand search of selected journals was employed to collate literature using key terms such as family members, intellectual disability, and residential setting. By extracting relevant data of the eighteen articles that fulfilled all inclusion criteria, the following 3 main themes with each subthemes were identified inductively: roles of family members after the transition, the effects of the transition on family members, and the collaboration between the family members and professional care staff. This review presents the different roles family members partake and highlights the importance of regular open two-sided communication for collaboration with professional staff to be successful. Practical implementations are discussed and the need for further research in the field is indicated.

Keywords: challenging behavior; family member; intellectual disability; residential institution; successful collaboration.

Figure 1.

Applied search terms.

Figure 2.

Literature search and review process.