The Limits and Contributions of Formal Support: Service Providers’ Perspectives on Balancing Formal and Natural Support for People with Disabilities and their Families in Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Evidence suggests that integrated support, combining both natural and formal supports, is often essential for individuals with developmental disabilities to achieve their preferred quality of life. However, studies are limited on how to organize supports so that people with developmental disabilities and their families find a balance between formal and natural supports. Often, there are systemic and personal boundaries around the nature and extent of support that can be offered to persons with developmental disabilities through formal mechanisms, yet the value of natural supports in the lives of persons with developmental disabilities is often undervalued in society. Therefore, the objectives of this study were to explore formal support providers' perspectives on (a) the unique skillsets and attributes of natural support providers and formal support providers; and (b) how we might best enable both natural and formal supports for persons with developmental disabilities and their families. Following a qualitative approach, we interviewed 16 formal support providers working with adults with developmental disabilities and their families via Zoom. We analyzed data using thematic analysis. We organized results into three themes: the role of natural supports, the role of formal supports, and strategies to best configure a system of supports. Results imply that there is a need for investment of funding to incentivize both support structures for adults with developmental disabilities and their families. Future studies should explore the perspectives from people with developmental disabilities and their natural support providers.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.022 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.042 | 0.019 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.011 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.010 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".