The National Institute on Intellectual Disability and Community (Norwegian acronym NAKU)
The report mentions the following challenges:
Challenges mentioned in the White Paper are:
1. Municipalities face great challenges when they try to recruit staff who can support people with intellectual disabilities in their daily lives and enhance the competency of the staff members.
2. It is important to establish contact with the people responsible for planning as well as providing services in the municipalities, in order to convey knowledge of how living conditions and services can be improved.
3. It is necessary to build a good range of services for intellectually disabled people who have mental disorders and/or serious behavioural disorders.
4. Each municipality must accommodate the need for user participation and individually tailored services for people with intellectual disabilities.
5. Additionally, there are challenges associated with the social life and personal network of people with intellectual disabilities.
6. Arrangements must be made to allow for a more active and varied leisure time.
7. It must be ensured that disabled people who have adequate abilities to work, have opportunities to participate in ordinary work life.
The Value of a National Competence Community
In a 2005 report, the Directorate of Health and Social Affairs described the potential value created by a national competence community for the disabled. The report states that:
It is important to establish an Institute on National level
The Institute will be a separate organisational unit, but may independently initiate and operate competency networks in various fields of interest.
Main focus of the Institute will be issues regarding living conditions as well as the quality of services for people with intellectual disabilities
Target groups for the Institute are primarily the various professionals who are working in the services organised by the municipalities, but also take a wider perspective on issues regarding living conditions for people with intellectual disabilities. This involves close cooperation with national health and social services and other state authorities. The need for task coordination implies that the Institute must be able to collect and distribute data and information across the boundaries of the various services.
The Institute will promote competency enhancementabout persons with intellectual disabilities in a life course perspective
The Institute will deal with issues related to persons with a slight to moderate degree of intellectual disability, as well as those with a severe and profound intellectual disability. The target group also includes people with additional problems, which often involve complex life situations. It is important to focus upon transitions through various phases of life and to be able to shift focus as time passes onto new tasks and issues.
The Institute will focus on developing competence as well as imparting knowledge
The legitimacy of Institute is closely linked with its proficiency regarding the main problem areas of the target group.
The Institute must obtain and develop proficiency in close cooperation with
- careers and service providers,
- specialist health services,
- research communities and
- specialised centres of competency
The Institute must have a sound knowledge of how to convey information in a result-oriented manner, using modern tools, especially when transferring information to service providers in the municipalities.
The primary target group
The primary target group for the National Institute is service providers and staff in the municipalities.
The core activity of the Institute
The Institute will constitute a national, professional hub that possesses an overall overview of available knowledge, which may contribute to improve the quality of services and living conditions for persons with intellectual disabilities. The two key elements, excellent services and good living conditions, may be interpreted as follows:
Good living conditions:
· Full participation and equal opportunities.
· Self-determination.
· An all-inclusive society.
Excellent services:
· Excellent services imply correct as well as adequate services. Correct services require that the service providers have the necessary knowledge about the relevant types of services available within their field. The service providers also need to possess an up-to-date and professionally founded knowledge about the services selected.
· Furthermore, excellent services involve the users and utilise resources, in addition to being effective, safe, secure, well coordinated, characterised by continuity, available and justly distributed (The Directorate of Health and Social Services, 2005).
· The provision of health and social services always involves some degree of caring and social work, which will vary according to the type of services. Consequently, service provision include many of the same aspects that are used to describe caring and social work in a thesis by Rønning in 1992, namely
an emotional aspect, an action-related aspect, a relational aspect and a moral aspect, which must all be balanced.
In order for the knowledge and competence conveyed to contribute to securing excellent services and good living conditions for disabled people, they must help shed light on the correlation between the elements, as well as promote action-based competence in step with such knowledge.
The Institute will:
· Develop a knowledge pool regarding good living conditions and services for people with intellectual disabilities.
· Develop methods for transferring competence to and from the municipalities.
· Stimulate and contribute to the implementation and accomplishment of development work in areas that may be important to creating good living conditions for disabled people.
· Act as a path finder and driving force for both national and international challenges regarding good living conditions for disabled people.
· Promote the opportunities for disabled people to obtain full participation and self-determination in society
E-post: naku@hist.no Telefon 73 55 93 10