A Qualitative Exploration of Paid Carers' Experience of Caring for Men With Intellectual and/or Developmental Disability and Harmful Sexual Behaviour.
Eleanor Drew, Lisa Richardson, Glynis Murphy and 1 others
Paid carers supporting men with IDD and harmful sexual behaviour cope through their own motivation and personal strategies, not organisational support.
Peer connection and accessible supervision matter most; public stigma can force carers to reduce contact with the men they support.
Key findings
1Carers manage the emotional strain of the role through strategies they develop themselves, not through organisational support, across both public and private sector settings.
2Peer support from colleagues was valued as much as management supervision, and public stigma directly forced at least one carer to reduce contact with the man they supported, seeing him only in pairs and at hospital.
3The strength of the caring relationship was ultimately determined by how much the men were willing to share and engage; carers had to adapt their approach and also advocate for their own breaks within 1:1 care.
Still to come
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
Six participants limits the breadth of conclusions that can be drawn about carers' experiences more generally. All participants were paid carers, which limits transferability to family or informal carers. The study was nested within a larger clinical trial, which aided recruitment but also created logistical and ethical complications. Limited direct access to participants may have affected recruitment and engagement. All carers were from the control (inactive) arm of the CBT trial, so their experience reflects a context without the structured CBT intervention.
Declared interests
Funded by the NIHR (project 128550). The authors state that the views expressed are their own and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care. No industry funding or other conflicts are declared.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the carers' emotional struggles as evidence that the men they supported were receiving inadequate care, or as a finding about what interventions work for men with IDD and HSB. The paper reports the lived experience of six carers in the control arm of a CBT trial; it does not measure or report the men's outcomes, and with six participants the themes cannot be generalised to all carers in this field.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →