Adolescents with mild intellectual disabilities/borderline intellectual functioning online. Opportunities and challenges for care workers

Rogier de Groot, MSc, LLM

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Expectations?

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Working definition in the Netherlands:

• Mild Intellectual Disability = IQ between 50-70

• Borderline Intellectual Functioning = IQ between70-85 + limited social adaptive functioning

= MID-BIF

Defining the target population

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Challenges and solutions

Write down:1. Your largest challenge in guiding

your clients/patients online2. Your proposed solution to this

challenge

Does a low IQ lead to more online vulnerability?

You should think so, looking at the characteristics of adolescents with MID-BIF:

Low problem solving abilities, impulsive, streetwise, strong need to belong, naïve, problems with judging social situations etc.

Or the literature, for example:

- Risks of online sexual victimization (Normand & Sallafranque-St-Louis, 2015)

- Possible relationship between offline and online vulnerability(Baumgartner, 2013;

Wolak, Finkelhor, Mitchell &

Ybarra, 2008)

But it isn’t that simple……

1. The relationship between MID-BIF and offline delinquency/victimization is not linear. So what about online?

2. There are better predictors of delinquency and victimization than IQ.

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• Participatory observations of 16 adolescents with MID-BIF between 2015-2016 and 2017-2018

• 5 Women and 11 males

• Age between 13-24

• 12 residing in an assisted living facility

• 3 residing in foster care

• 1 living with his parents

Qualitative study on online behaviour of adolescents with MID-BIF

The risks

20 year old man has been

hacked on WOW twice

16 year old girl gets regular

sexual proposals through

WhatsApp

The risks

23 year old man who experiments

With online purchases

and bitcoin

14 year old girl who

wassexually abused

after online blackmail

The risks

23 year old man who watches porno on his mobile andexperiments with online dating apps.

The risks

19 year old man plays a lot of videogames, especially Star Wars Battlefront.

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Observations from a research visit toSaint Mary’s hospital:

- Patient with a religious obsession.

- Patient who stalked others online,but was also blackmailed by another patient

- Patient who made live footage of patients and staff and posted it on Facebook

The risks

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• How to find a balance between screen time and real time?

• Under what circumstances can I restrict phone usage or game time?

• How do I make online activities more visible?

• Are there any methods or tools I can use?

• How do I make my client less vulnerable online?

• What do I do when a client wants to befriend me online?

• Is there recent scientific research on online risks?

Challenges

Challenge = Digital citizenship?

Digital citizenship = showing conscious, respectful and responsible behaviour in the digital world.(Loosely translated from Ribble, 2011, and Jones & Mitchell, 2016)

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Digital citizenship for children with MID-BIF, a bridge too far?

Digital gap =

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How do we close the gap?

Scientific research is important,

but practice based evidence is equally important

Challenges:

1.Research cannot keep up with technological developments and societal needs

2.More research WITH the adolescents and more focus on underlying motives for online behaviour

3.Scientific support difficult due to lack of research for example

Caton & Chapman, 2017

4.Interventions often not grounded in literature, and monitoring and evaluation no standardized parts of care plans or interventions in the Netherlands

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How do we close the gap?

“Less risk avoiding and more risk taking”

- Positive risk taking (for example. Seale, 2014) =1. Shared decision-making process2. Shared expectations on expected benefits and risks3. Appeals to creativity and resilience of professionals

- Learning through trial and error:

“Heeded my words not, did you? Pass on what you havelearned. Strength, mastery. But weakness, folly, failure also. Yes, failure most of all. The greatest teacher, failure

is.”Master Yoda in The Last Jedi, 2017

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How do we close the gap?

“Parent them and educate professionals ”

- Parenting should be tailor-made, both offline and online (Nikken, 2017)

- Motives for behaviour offline are motives for behaviour online (Boyd, 2014)

- Shifting the focus from treating problematic behaviour first to normal parenting first (Graas, 2017; Berding, 2016)

- Trust instead of distrust- Also education of students and (young) professionals(nikken, 2017)

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How do we close the gap?

“Real attention is key”

Take an interest, make time, really

listen, do it together

See, treat and educate the child as a

person instead of a problem

(Verheul & De Jong, 2016)

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“Make use of the knowledge you already possess”

Incorporate online education/

parenting into your professional

relationship

with a client/patient.

Hoe dichten we de kloof?

Back to you….

How did your largest challenge and proposed solution compare to my research?