Responsive Communication: Combining Attention to Sensory Issues with Using Body Language (Intensive Interaction) to Interact with Autistic Adults and Children Phoebe Caldwell, Elspeth Bradley, Janet Gurney, Jennifer Heath, Hope Lightowler, Kate Richardson and Jemma Swales Pavilion Publishing, 2019, 199pp Paperback and ebook £24.95
This highly readable and helpful collection introduces and examines the concept of responsive communication, and presents real-life stories showing it in action. In 2001, academic Melanie Nind and Dave Hewett, now director of the Intensive Interactive Institution, relaunched Geraint Ephraim’s 1980s concept of “augmented mothering” as “intensive interaction”. Since then, it has been used widely and successfully to tune in to the feelings and expressive capacities of children and adults through their body language and other non-verbal communication. It has proved particularly effective as a form of communication and interaction with people with the most profound disabilities and, more recently, people with autism. One of its primary effects is to reduce anxiety arising from interaction. Responsive communication seeks to build on the work of intensive interaction by paying attention to sensory issues. Like intensive interaction, it focuses on body language and non-verbal articulation, but also pays particular attention to supporting an environment for the individual that minimises the impact of sensory concerns. These concerns are wide ranging, and can include visual and auditory processing issues, emotional overload, reactions to smell and taste, and both over- and undersensitivity to feelings. Oversensitivity can manifest in reactions to footwear and clothes, while undersensitivity can be expressed through people applying violent physical stimuli to themselves. The book explores various strategies to enable people to reduce or alleviate the disabling impact of sensory issues on their lives and their relations with others. These strategies need imagination, flexibility and empathy because, as responsive communication practitioner Phoebe Caldwell observes, if people judge the sensory experiences of those with autism and profound disability by their own reactions, it can lead only to total misunderstanding. This eclectic collection, from Caldwell’s detailed overview to Hope Lightowler’s shocking account of the overwhelming sensory environment of the hospital in which she was detained, allow us to gain numerous perspectives. Much of the focus is on autism, but Janet Gurney of Us in a Bus covers interactions with people with profound disabilities.
Simon Jarrett
