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Growing older together:
supporting people through transitions
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"...A key question is how to constructively improve
the lifestyle and minimise the restrictions imposed by growing
old...
There are points of transition in the lives of older
people with learning disabilities, and their families which
offer services the challenge of providing support that either
enhances or diminishes the qualitative nature of their experience"
Matt Janicki
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The aim of this section is to:
- Identify the major transitions
facing older family carer's and their adult children with
learning disabilities,
- Identify ways to support families
in transition
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Some writers talk about the experience of having a disabled child
as akin to the experience of having a bereavement. The idea that
the parents have to go through a grieving process before they can
adjust to their new circumstances and accept their child’s
disability. Other writers suggest that their experience is more
complex than a simple 'adjustment' at the time when the child is
born. It has been suggested that there are a number of milestones
in a child's life that will emotionally challenge their parents.
As we have mentioned before, paid carers and staff come and go
but families are in for the duration! Family carers have to cope
and adjust to a number of different challenges or transitions in
their 'caring career'.
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These include:
- Being told their child has a
learning disability
- When their child reaches school
age - making choices and decisions about what sort of educational
opportunities would be right for their child
- Adolescence and the move from
children’s to adult services
- If their son or daughter has
the opportunity to leave home - in adulthood,
- Growing older together
- When health and illness (or
bereavement) makes it difficult and then impossible to care
any longer
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As older family carers and their adult children move through life
there are some important things to remember.
These families:
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Have been together for a long time,
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People’s identity is often caught
up in being the "mother of..." "daughter
of...", and there is a great deal of mutual dependence,
parents have been 'caring' for a very long time,
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Parents become vulnerable - both
in terms of their own health and the shrinking of their
support networks. This can be both frustrating and frightening.
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Relationships change and develop
as the years progress,
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Their middle aged son or daughter
with learning disabilities can often express concern about
their ageing parents and many naturally begin to take
on more and more caring roles,
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Parents have been worrying for years
about what will happen when they can no longer care, that
time is getting closer,
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Middle aged people with learning
disabilities face transitions from parental care and might
have friends and peers go through sudden changes - the
future is uncertain and a bit frightening
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