Love, Attachment and Intellectual Disability

Love, Attachment and Intellectual Disability takes a a trauma-informed approach to caring for people who have intellectual disabilities, highlighting the importance of the earliest attachments that we forge that meet our basic need for safety, care and love, and the trauma that can occur when this emotional need is not met.

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This book came about from the authors' experience working together in clinical learning disabilities services, and their work to move the focus away from the management of challenging behaviour and towards a trauma-informed, attachment-based approach to caring. It will introduce some of the key theories that have informed our understanding of the emotional development of people with intellectual disabilities and the importance of receiving love from an attachment figure from a young age, followed by case studies that focus on the lives of particular individuals - sometimes presented as individual therapy sessions and sometimes an overview of progress across many sessions. Whilst it describes work done by a psychology team in community health services, it is relevant to all health and social care professionals who help people with intellectual disabilities, as well as useful for advocates, service commissioners, families and healthcare generalists.