What do we do? What can we do?: Preliminary findings from a research project on digitally facilitating meaningful activities for adults with ID during the pandemic
2023 (English) In: 16th Nordic Network on Disability Research Conference, Reykjavik, May 10-12, 2023., 2023Conference paper, Oral presentation with published abstract (Other academic)
Abstract [en]
This presentation aims to share and discuss preliminary results from an ongoing research project that investigates the digital leap triggered by the lockdown of daily activity centres for individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID) due to Covid-19. In Sweden, adults with ID who are not employed or enrolled as students have a right to support with meaningful activities, typically organized at or through daily activity centres. However, in the spring of 2020, many daily activity centres across Sweden closed overnight as a response to the escalating spread of Covid-19. The project analyses the digitalization process at five daily activity centres and its future development and relates to the important issue of digital inclusion for individuals with ID. Interviews have been carried out with staff members and overseers at the daily activity centres, individual service users, and support persons in the service users’ home environments. Preliminary results reveal that staff members were left “fumbling in the dark” as they experimented with different ways of facilitating meaningful activities – both online and offline – with and for individual service users during a period when few knew what was possible, reasonable, or even legally permissible to do. As an added complication, the lockdown period revealed that access to computers, the Internet and software which would allow for visual and/or auditory engagements in the absence of immediate face-to-face interactions, was not something that all service users had. Additionally, access to the required hardware and software was sometimes not enough on its own, as other factors functioned as barriers that either hindered or made attempted meaningful activities utterly impossible to carry out, such as differing attitudes, competences, and available resources between the daily activity centre staff and support persons in the service users home environments.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages 2023.
Keywords [en]
intellectual disability, daily activity centres, meaningful activities, Covid-19, digitalization
Keywords [sv]
intellektuell funktionsnedsättning, daglig verksamhet, meningsfull sysselsättning, Covid-19, digitalisering
National Category
Sociology Social Work Information Systems, Social aspects
Research subject Working Life Studies; Social Work
Identifiers URN: urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-62554 OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mdh-62554 DiVA, id: diva2:1756788
Conference 16th Nordic Network on Disability Research Conference, Reykjavik, May 10-12, 2023.
Projects Digital daily activity centres. The digital leap triggered by Covid-19 and its future consequences for individuals with ID
Funder Forte, Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare, 2021-01880 2023-05-152023-05-152025-02-17 Bibliographically approved