Peer Support Is a Phone Call Away

ISBN-13: 9783639206791 / Angielski / Miękka / 2009 / 132 str.

Djenana Jalovcic

Opis

Interaction of disability and gender creates additional disadvantages and barriers to the full participation of women with disabilities. The health needs of women with spinal cord injury (SCI), like other disabled women, are often ignored and neglected. In order to assist women with SCI to live active and healthy lives a telephone peer support group program was established. In this iterative learning journey participants had the power to design and implement a peer support program which would meet their needs. This phenomenological study documents experiences of seven women who took part in the participatory program which produced positive results. For true peers, the program was a space of "real understanding" and learning in which participants perceptions of self were shaped, new identities found, where loneliness was replaced with the feeling of belonging. It was the space where the bodily aspects of SCI and the socially constructed roles of women were examined, where solutions for healthy lifestyle were discussed and embraced, and where relationships with others developed into the positive interactions of informed and empowered individuals.

O autorze

Djenana Jalovcic, MSc, MPA, is a Director of the International Centre for the Advancement of Community Based Rehabilitation at Queen's University, Kingston, Canada.