| Summary: | The shift in learning disability services from institution to community settings has been mirrored by the development of new types of respite, short and long term care for individuals with a learning disability. Adult Family Placements are provided by individuals or families in the local community, who share their homes and their lives with people with learning disabilities who need support to live more independent lives. In recent years there has been growing interest in the provision of family-based schemes (McConkey, McConaghie, Roberts & King 2002), and such schemes are now widely used for the provision of long term residential care for people with learning disabilities in Britain (Dagnan, 1997).While a limited amount of research has focussed on the characteristics of providers of Adult Family Placements (Gage, 1995; McConkey et al., 2005), and some has focussed on the recruitment and retention of such providers (Bernard, 2004; Hanrahan, 2006), very little research has focussed on the reasons behind why people become providers of such placements (McConkey et al., 2005). The aim of the present study was to use qualitative methodology to explore the experiences of five individuals who provide Adult Family Placements for individuals with a learning disability. Information was gathered using semi-structured interviews and verbatim transcripts were then analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Smith, 2004). From the analysis, five superordinate themes emerged, each with their corresponding master themes. The superordinate themes were ‘motivation to provide a placement’, ‘notion of family’, ‘scope of role’, ‘emotional investment’ and ‘personal-professional issues’. These themes raised a number of important clinical and service considerations concerning the recruitment, training and retention of Adult Family Placement providers. The implications of the study for both services and clinical practice are discussed and recommendations made.
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