A technique developed by a Southampton academic has radically challenged approaches to working with people with severe learning disabilities. The Intensive Interaction technique has improved the quality of life for huge numbers of people and laid the foundations for a body of research that continues to generate impact today.
Communicating with people who have severe and complex learning disabilities or autism can be extremely challenging and many remain difficult to reach and socially isolated. Historically it had always been thought that it was impossible to teach people who displayed challenging behaviour so all efforts went into modifying the behaviour. However, Professor Melanie Nind of Southampton Education School, and her former colleague Dr Dave Hewett, now Director of the Intensive Interaction Institute, believed that extreme behaviour was an understandable reaction to circumstances and that it was important to begin to engage with people who otherwise remained socially isolated.
There are around 38,000 school-aged children in England with severe/profound and multiple learning difficulties. Many teachers struggle to find teaching approaches and curricula to facilitate the social and communication development of these children.
Similarly, adults in the UK and around the world whose behaviour has interfered with them developing good relationships have been vulnerable to harsh institutional and medical intervention. Intensive Interaction offers practical solutions that are based on strong theoretical and empirical foundations.
Melanie and Dave, with colleagues at Harperbury Hospital School, developed the approach of Intensive Interaction that teaches fundamental communication skills to children and adults with severe learning difficulties or autism. It is based on the way young children learn early communication skills from their parents and works by progressively developing responsive, mutually enjoyable interaction sequences that are frequently repeated and reflected upon. By using the Intensive Interaction techniques and increasing the ability of people with learning disabilities/autism and their communication partners to communicate and relate, they and their families can experience better and more fulfilled lives.
Intensive Interaction has already been widely adopted throughout the UK and around the world and has been influential at national policy level. It is included in national curriculum guidance (having been endorsed by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority) and the government’s strategy for people with learning disabilities Valuing People Now. It is used across education, psychology, social care, and speech and occupational therapy, and is promoted by voluntary organisations.
The approach is also having an impact internationally. Research on the emotional well-being benefits of Intensive Interaction is being applied in Eastern European orphanages in Montenegro and Romania. It is also being increasingly used in Greece, has been widely implemented in Australia and New Zealand, and is beginning to be incorporated into work in Thailand. In Canada Intensive Interaction is used in psychiatric clinical practice to promote mental health in people with intellectual disabilities.
Melanie is continuing to build on this work and her recent research on mental health, enabling access, and positive risk-taking is providing current and new practitioners of Intensive Interaction with new data and thinking to inform their practice and policy. She has since been awarded an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) grant and has been exploring quality in doing research inclusively with people with learning disabilities.
Melanie Nind, Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, is Professor of Education at the University of Southampton. She is also Director of the Centre for Research in Inclusion in the Southampton Education School. Melanie is one of the co-directors of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods where she leads research on the pedagogy of research methods learning. She has been conferred with gold membership of the Asian Qualitative Research Association, for support of qualitative research development, and with an honorary doctorate from VID, Norway, for her contribution to science. She editor-in-chief of the British Journal of Learning Disabilities, past editor of International Journal of Research & Method in Education and on the editorial boards of European Journal of Special Needs Education and Disability and Society. Her recent research projects have focused on pedagogy and innovation in research methods and on quality in inclusive research. Melanie edits the Bloomsbury Research Methods for Education book series.
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