How Visiting Nurses Support Families of Infants with Severe Motor and Intellectual Disabilities to Adapt to Life

Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine the practices of visiting nurses in order to ascertain the stages through which they support families of infants with SMID (severe motor and intellectual disabilities), from the stage at which they commence their home-visit services for the child to the stage at which they determine the family’s adaptability to life. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 15 visiting nurses who have handled such cases throughout these stages and subjected the data to a qualitative descriptive analysis.

The analysis revealed the following process: After commencing their home-visit services, the nurses carefully develop a cordial rapport with the family caring for the child with disabilities, elicit the mother’s narratives as necessary to help the family transform their relationship with the child, and encourage the mother to advance to the stage where she engages in family-building. After establishing a rapport with the mother, the nurses begin changing their approach so that they can help the family enter into the stage of searching for family ties while coping with destabilizing factors, and monitor the family members, supporting the family’s enhanced strength. Finally, the nurses judge the family’s adaptability to life by ascertaining that they are a “family of their own,” that is, a family in which the child can live as “the family’s child.”