Key word signing: Parents’ experiences of an unaided form of augmentative and alternative communication (Lámh)

Abstract

Parents' experiences of using Lámh, a key word signing approach used in Ireland, were captured through in-depth face-to-face interviews with parents of children with a range of intellectual disabilities. It emerged that Lámh provides child users with one of the rudiments of inclusion, that is, a means of engaging with others. A number of factors can potentially influence the engagement achieved, namely ongoing family commitment to the sustainment of Lámh, available communication partners, accessibility, appropriate Lámh training, speech and language therapy support and the existence of a Lámh signing environment external to the home. The child's family, education and community need to commit to Lámh in order to support a child user become an active member of their community.

Parents’ Perceptions and Experiences with Their Children’s Use of Augmentative/Alternative Communication: A Systematic Review and Qualitative Meta-Synthesis

“…These key findings, organized into themes and subthemes, are synthesized in Table 2. Some studies showed that problems for supporting families were an important factor in AAC abandonment [23,24,26,27,31,34,41]. Parents expressed their desire of having a high level of support with a variety of service delivery models, such as telehealth, more parent-training courses or interventions, or family-to-family networking.…”

“…The overlap and miscommunication between therapists or services shown in some studies [23,31,39] could be minimized with clear communication and structured service planning, as some parents claimed:…”

“…For example, they expressed their "difficulties sourcing pictures" for low-technology systems such as communication books and PECS. Therefore, parents felt frustrated because their responsibilities increased after the introduction of AAC [24,26,27,[29][30][31][32]35,[38][39][40]: "I work full-time as a nurse, and my husband works full-time, and three kids and two older kids who are running in six directions. And unfortunately, we probably fall short of making time [to support AAC use]."…”

Nature and extent of intellectual disability nursing research in Ireland: a scoping review to inform health and health service research

“…Alternative therapies 174 175 Communication Communication interventions [176][177][178][179][180][181][182][183][184][185] Interpersonal relationships [186][187][188][189][190][191][192][193] Table 5 Professional development, education and research…”

Commentary on “Use of key word signing for children and adults with intellectual disability in an Irish context”

“…The decades from the 1970s to the early 2000s saw many research papers and book chapters dedicated to analysing the parameters of intervention through sign and its application; however, interest then seemed to decrease, possibly because of the rise in technological solutions. Recently there has been something of a revival of this research (Meuris et al , 2014; LeVan et al , 2019; Tan et al , 2014) and the current set of studies focussing on Lámh are a very welcome development (Bowles and Friizelle, 2016; Dolly and Noble, 2018; Glacken et al , 2018). They represent a dedicated initiative by the organisation[2] (to reflective practice and evidence based outcomes).…”