Role distribution

With WAVE, we want to make more room for the experiences, wishes, expectations and worries of people with serious or moderate mental disabilities, and their relatives, in situations where challenging behaviour has become entrenched. In order to give these a leading role, the other people involved must be prepared to take a step sideways, forwards, or even backwards.
It is crucial that the support team  –  including the manager and behavioural expert – explicitly agree to experiment with this new division of roles and a different way of working. Only then can everything that happens, and what is learned from it, be the subject of formal and informal consultation and other forms of knowledge sharing (‘knock-on effect’).

• Healthcare professionals (supervisors, orthopaedists, and physicians specialising in intellectual disabilities), along with relatives and managers, perhaps have the most important role: they are key figures in the research process, co-researchers, and facilitators and ambassadors of innovation.
• The outsider researchers and the insiders must gain sufficient trust in one another to continue participating in WAVE, each in their own way.
• The newcomers carry out an internship involving a case study or thesis assignment. They do this in coordination with principal investigators and the insiders and are also involved in the outsiders’ activities.
• The principal investigators coordinate the research and partly carry it out themselves. They are also responsible for the training and supervision of the outsiders and ensure that WAVE continues to monitor the research question.