“They don’t understand people with learning disabilities”: Exploring the experiences of people with intellectual disabilities who undergo welfare assessments.

Ward, Bethan (2022) “They don’t understand people with learning disabilities”: Exploring the experiences of people with intellectual disabilities who undergo welfare assessments. Doctor of Clinical Psychology thesis, University of Liverpool.

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Abstract

Individuals with intellectual disabilities are eligible for out of work and disability benefits within the United Kingdom (UK) welfare system. Research suggests that the welfare system causes psychological harm (Arie, 2018), which has been linked to work capability assessments (WCA; Barr et al., 2016). Existing studies on people who claim benefits (e.g. Allen et al., 2016) have not focussed on the experiences of people with intellectual disabilities. The aim of this project is to explore the experiences of people with intellectual disabilities who undergo WCA and provide insight into potential interventions to reduce any psychological distress related to claiming benefits. Stigma is experienced by people who claim benefits (Baumberg et al., 2016) and people with intellectual disabilities (Scior, 2016). Stigma has been linked to psychological distress in people with intellectual disabilities (Ali et al., 2015) and people who claim benefits (Thompson, in press). Self-stigma may be particularly harmful (Boyd et al., 2014). It has been suggested that self-compassion may act as a buffer between self-stigma and distress (Wong et al., 2019). Therefore, Chapter One of the thesis comprises a systematic review of literature examining the relationship between self-stigma and self-compassion. The synthesis of twenty quantitative papers demonstrated consistent, inverse associations between self-compassion and self-stigma scores, suggesting that self-compassion could have potential benefits for reducing the impact of self-stigma. Chapter Two is an empirical paper exploring the lived experiences of eight people with intellectual disabilities in the UK, who were interviewed about their experiences of being assessed for welfare eligibility. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) suggested five closely related themes; living in fear; marginalisation; relationship with the assessor; others as a safe base; and finding value. The findings captured the distressing nature of the benefit assessment process for people with intellectual disabilities. Although this was an exploratory study, findings suggest that future research and interventions might be usefully targeted towards improving the experience of the assessment process, as well as clinically treating individual’s responses to the assessment process. Recommendations for change across individual, systemic and policy levels are included.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctor of Clinical Psychology)
Divisions:	Faculty of Health and Life Sciences Faculty of Health and Life Sciences > Institute of Population Health
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	05 Sep 2022 10:29
Last Modified:	18 Jan 2023 21:17
DOI:	10.17638/03146184
Supervisors:	Greenhill, Elizabeth ORCID: 0000-0003-4948-6796 Weatherhead, Ste
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3146184