Learning disability is a growing problem in the UK Essay

Learning disability is a growing problem in the UK - Essay Example Quine (2003) studied a sample of 200 five to 18-year-olds with learning disabilities and identified a range of behaviour difficulties such as: attention seeking (29%), over activity (21%), temper tantrums (25%), aggressiveness (21%), screaming (22%), wandering off (18%), destructiveness (14%) and self-injurious behaviour (12%). Kiernan and Kiernan (2000) found that in a study of 68 schools for children with severe learning disabilities, 8% were thought to have extremely difficult or very difficult behaviour and a further 14% who were thought to have behavioural difficulties of a lesser nature. They calculated that somewhere in the region of 2000 children in England and Wales alone will present with severe difficulties, and that a further 3400 will present with difficulties of a lesser nature. As introduced above, the determining, the prevalence of behaviour analysis is difficult, in part because of inadequate operationalization of the term. The preferred term, behaviour analysis, is regarded by a number of commentators as problematic, because of its tendency to be used over-inclusively for a range of other conditions (Slevin 2000, Gates 2002). Consequently, in the current study, to achieve conceptual clarity the term was operational zed to refer exclusively to children with learning disabilities who predominantly demonstrated behavioural difficulties. ... Nihira (2000) has divided behavioural difficulties into six subcategories: violent and antisocial behaviour, rebellious behaviour, untrustworthy behaviour, destructive behaviour towards property or self, stereotyped and hyperactive behaviour and inappropriate body exposure. These six subcategories have been developed into an eight category scale: The British Association on Learning Disabilities, Adaptive Behaviour Scale-Residential and Community 2nd Edition (UKLD ABS: RC: 2) (Nihira et al. 2000). The manifestation of any behaviour that fell into any of these eight subcategories, at a level that caused parental distress, was used in this study as evidence of behaviour difficulties. Learning Disabilities and Developmental Disabilities. A relatively unexplored conceptual issue is the relationship between learning disabilities and developmental disabilities. This relationship is important to the topic of this article because the emphasis on functionality in the recent UKLD definition (Luckasson et al., 2001) is conceptually similar to that found in the definition of developmental disabilities (Beirne-Smith et al., 2000). Furthermore, Learning Disabilities have always been considered the most common type of developmental disability. As defined in the Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act of 2000 (P.L. 98-527), a developmental disability refers to a severe, chronic condition that causes substantial functional limitations in three or more major life activities. This primary component of the definition is very similar to the UKLD definition's specification of limitations in two or more applicable adaptive skill areas. For a comparison among the