Nordic Network on Self-Regulation
The Nordic Network for Self-Regulation aims to increase and spread knowledge about how professionals, caregivers, and relatives can support people with congenital deafblindness in creating balance and managing emotions.
Self-regulation is an ability we all possess, and it is necessary for us to function in our everyday life. Self-regulation can simply be defined as a person’s ability to manage or adapt their thoughts, feelings, and actions so that they master the demands, challenges, and opportunities in their environment (Nicholas et al., 2015. Congenital Deafblindness and Challenging Behaviour). Self-regulation is the source of good learning, mental health, and relational competence.
All people can find self-regulation difficult. Consider the challenges this poses for people who have combined visual and hearing impairments, deafblindness, intellectual disabilities, and atypical communication. Within the deafblind population, self-regulation difficulties are a common challenge, and manifest in many ways. When we are faced with feelings and expressions that are both difficult to understand and deal with, we need theory and practical knowledge to support and contribute to life being perceived as more balanced.
How can the professional and close network be helpful? What tools are available for working with people with self-regulation challenges?
The Nordic Network for Self-Regulation was approved as a Nordic Network by the Nordic Leadership Forum in 2020. Prior to that, the network functioned as a working group with the ambition to look more closely at challenging and difficult behaviour in people with deafblindness caused by the Rubella virus (Congenital Rubella Syndrome). The expansion of the target group to include people with congenital combined vision and hearing loss, or deafblindness, developed naturally.
Increasing focus is being placed on understanding challenging behaviour in people with congenital deafblindness from a self-regulation and communication perspective.
Approaches and methods used by the network:
- Use of the assessment form for self-regulation functions (KSF) as a basis for special educational and environmental therapy work
- Identifying sub-processes in self-regulation through case examples. We look at interpretations and action thinking, especially in relation to environmental therapy approaches
- Understanding complex conditions such as pain, depression, and psychosis in people with congenital deafblindness from a self-regulation perspective
- Pharmacological treatment from a self-regulation perspective
- Connection between self-regulation interventions and other related interventions such as the low-arousal approach.
- How different subject perspectives, such as neuropsychological or neuro-pedagogical, can help in understanding self-regulation challenges, as well as develop good interventions and adaptations.
- Understanding how tactile-body co-regulated adaptation can contribute to a greater degree of self-regulation
The network aims to spread and develop knowledge about self-regulation by arranging courses and professional days, and by members of the network assisting local networks where there is a need to strengthen knowledge about self-regulation and related strategies.
By working case-based and using video and other tools, we can develop more competence and understanding of concrete action thinking in relation to physiological regulation, and pain, affect, and emotion regulation. It is also of great importance that we collaborate with the other Nordic networks focusing on Cognition, Tactile Language, Communicative Relations, and CHARGE.
