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The British Journal of Developmental Disabilities Vol. 46, Part 2, JULY 2000, No. 91, pp. 97-108 The use of touch in caring for people with learning disability Evelyn Gale and John R. Hegarty Summary Background Touch has many meanings. It can be interpreted as the acknowledgement of a person's presence, a display of love, an act of aggression, a desire for comfort or a feeling of physical closeness. How one person interprets the touch of another depends upon each person's cultural background, the nature of the relationship and each individual's feelings at the time. Despite the importance of touch, however, it has received very little attention in discussions of caring, and virtually none at all in learning disability. Aim This study was to examine how people who care for people with a learning disability use touch and how clients interpret the touch they receive. Method The study was designed as a non-participant, observational study of carers in their daily work-routines in three different residential settings with adults with severe to profound learning disabilities. A recording chart was designed that allowed recording of: who gave the touch, where on the body the client was touched, the response of the clients and the type of touch that was given. Results The results of this study showed that clients received more ‘functional’ touch than ‘expressive’ or ‘therapeutic’ touch. The majority of touch the clients received was to the hands. The results showed that the qualified nurses gave more instances of touch than the health care support workers did. The responses of the clients on being touched resulted in equal positive and negative non-verbal responses. Implications This study shows the types of touch used by nurses, and clients' responses, and it is hoped that it has developed not only new knowledge in the use of touch within learning disability nursing but that this knowledge could lead to improvements in nursing practice. As such, the authors are hopeful that the findings will be acted upon by both service personnel and nurse educators, incorporated into standards and will inform the development of practice. *Evelyn Gale, RNMH, RCNT,
MA, Ph.D. Tel: 0044 (0)1782 552952 Fax: 0044 (0)1782 712941 E-mail: nsa31@keele.ac.uk John R. Hegarty, BA, Ph.D. * For Correspondence
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