Research Streams

People with developmental disabilities face unique challenges in all areas of their lives, from education and work to health and daily living. The St.Amant Research Centre works to build useful knowledge in all these areas to help people with disabilities fulfil their potential.

We currently have projects underway in the areas of Choice, Autism, Community Health, Educating Health Care Professionals, Families, Effective Teaching and Knowledge Translation.

Choice

Choice empowers us and is key to good quality of life. Some people with developmental disabilities benefit from extra support when making choices. For example, choice options may be more meaningful when presented in a particular format. A person may not be able to respond effectively to the question, "What would you like to do this evening?" Yet they may be able to indicate their wishes by pointing to pictures of activities.

Our research in this area is focused on providing family, teachers and caregivers with an accurate and practical way to determine the best method for presenting choices to people with developmental disabilities.

Autism

Early Intensive Behavioural Intervention (EIBI)
Research has found that many children with autism spectrum disorder and some other developmental disabilities benefit greatly from EIBI. The St.Amant Research Centre is conducting a longitudinal evaluation of the outcomes of EIBI programs. The study includes St.Amant’s Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) program, which applies EIBI.

Read more about the EIBI study.

Perspective-taking
Children with autism often have difficulty learning perspective-taking, the skill of seeing the world from another person’s point of view. We are studying ways to help children with autism learn this essential skill.

Read more about the perspective-taking study.

Prevalence
We are studying the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder in Manitoba and across Canada to help service planners know how many children and adults need services. This study also ties into our community health research.

Genetics
The cause of autism is still unknown. In addition to helping to identify the cause of autism, our genetics study will help provide early diagnosis so that appropriate services reach children and families as quickly as possible and pave the way for developing more effective treatments.

Community Health

People with developmental disabilities tend to have more health related problems than the general population, and many of these conditions can be treated if they're identified early. Yet we know very little about how persons with developmental disabilities living in the community access and use health care services.

St.Amant has undertaken the first study of the health and health care use patterns of individuals with developmental disabilities in Manitoba. The first stage was a pilot study to determine that we can use Manitoba’s existing databases to distinguish persons with and without developmental disabilities. This stage was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

In the second stage, now underway, we are examining a number of health indicators to describe and compare health status and health care use patterns of people with and without developmental disabilities living in Manitoba.

In a future stage, we aim to study health-related issues of people with developmental disabilities as they age. This is expected to be an area of concern for health service planners based on the increased life expectancy for people with developmental disabilities.

Educating Health Care Professionals

The health care system is straining to meet the needs of the general population and is unprepared to care properly for increasing numbers of persons with developmental disabilities.

The St.Amant Research Centre is looking at how best to equip health care and allied health professionals to care for people with developmental disabilities.

Previous research found that health care professionals’ attitudes to people with developmental disabilities influence the care they provide. Our research indicates that new health care professionals do not have positive attitudes toward people with developmental disabilities. This may be due to a lack of information and positive role models in health care education programs.

We are working to provide better education for faculty and students in nursing and other health care education programs.

Our goal is to integrate information about developmental disabilities into these programs and prepare future health care providers to care for people with developmental disabilities in a variety of settings.

Families

Families of individuals with developmental disabilities often provide the most important and enduring relationships and support that individuals will experience across their life spans.

We are studying how to assess and meet the needs of families as they face life transitions – their own and those of their family member with a disability.

Families often come into conflict with health care providers when they must make difficult decisions about the care of their family member with a developmental disability. One of our current projects is to understand family’s decision-making process around a specific issue: gastrostomy feeding (through a tube in the stomach).

We are studying both the families' and the health care providers' perspectives to develop educational tools to ensure a smoother transition during this process.

Effective Teaching

Effective teachers break lessons down into basic building blocks to help students gain knowledge and skills step by step. How can we apply this principle to students who face special learning challenges? What component skills are needed for the many everyday tasks that may presently be too difficult for those with developmental disabilities?

Our research into the Assessment of Basic Learning Abilities (ABLA) aims to answer these and other questions. Our goal is to develop ABLA into a teaching tool that can help any student learn and grow to their full potential.

One study currently under way is looking at error correction procedures to narrow down the areas in which this teaching strategy is most effective. Read more about the Error Correction Procedure study.

Knowledge Translation

Knowledge translation is the process of bringing research to life to help those who need it most. Families need help wading through mountains of information – some of it inaccurate – about treatments and services for developmental disabilities. Practitioners need access to research to guide their practices. Administrators and policy-makers need evidence to make informed decisions about services, policies and resources.

The St.Amant Research Centre is dedicated to helping families, practitioners and decision-makers learn from research. We are working with all these stakeholders to put in place a knowledge translation process for Manitoba and beyond. In 2008, we held three community workshops to identify next steps to improve knowledge translation.