Abstract
The treatment of people with a mild intellectual disability (IQ 50 – 80) with serious psychological and behavioral problems can be demanding for a team. Besides the psychological and behavioral problems, the discrepancy between cognitive and social-emotional age, the capabilities of the client and the expectations of themselves and the environment can lead to confusion for the client and staff. This confusion creates powerlessness which regularly leads to hesitation and not daring to act among the professionals, which in return gives ‘free reign’ to the client’s psychological & behavioral problems.

In addition, we see a challenge in the collaboration within the teams to support each other. The teams often include colleagues who traditionally opted for work with the disabled in order to take good care of the clients. On the other hand, we see colleagues who are attracted to the intensity of the work and choose a strict, directive attitude. The teams therefore face a challenge of how they can cooperate to form a ‘we’. We experienced that it takes a lot of courage for these professionals to focus on their own attitude, emotion and tension. We therefore developed working methods to allow professionals to reflect on their own attitude and to practice new skills. We will share one of these ‘working methods’ in the workshop.

Especially for these teams, who work with clients with intellectual disabilities, we adapted the Non Violent Resistance-interventions by using the ‘Together 100’ from Triple C (www.asvz.nl) and the ‘social emotional development scales’(SEO, Anton Dosen).  Our goal is to share NVR-experiences, adaptations and knowledge from our work with (young) adults with mild intellectual disabilities, to inspire others to integrate NVR further in their own practice.