Unspoken Stories reveals the inner worlds of non-speaking young people with intellectual disabilities. Drawing on many months of immersive observation of Cassie and Owen, two young people living in a specialist residential school, author Beverley Samways reveals the emotional depth and intelligence often overlooked in ‘behaviour’, showing that when we truly listen – beyond speech – we can discover rich inner worlds and the profound human need for connection. Eschewing formal academic approaches, she instead uses ethnography and narrative non-fiction to offer a tender, beautifully written journey into Cassie and Owen’s emotional, sensory and relational worlds.
Exploring how feelings can pass between people non-verbally, shaping behaviour and relationships, and how adults must hold and process these emotions carefully for a young person to feel safe, she challenges the systems intended to support these individuals, and reimagines what it means to listen to those who so often go unheard.
About the author
Beverley Samways is the founder and CEO of Unique Connections, a team of specialists who work alongside people with learning disabilities and autism who self-injure or are distressed, as well as the schools and care organisations around them, to create lasting, meaningful change. Unique Connections has a podcast that streams on all platforms. Bev’s career began as a young agency care worker, when a life-changing relationship with a young woman named Shelley shaped her vocation and philosophy of listening. She has since spent more than 25 years in this field.
A practising Christian and deeply relational practitioner, she brings a commitment to justice, connection, and compassionate care. She completed her PhD on the emotional experiences of non-speaking young people who self-injure (including Cassie and Owen from this book), using immersive ethnography to centre voices usually excluded from research.
Content
Foreword by Baroness Sheila Hollins
Introduction
Writing people
Challenging ‘challenging behaviour’
Diagnosis
The research
Introducing Cassie and Owen
The process of participation and consent
Cassie’s Story
Prologue: Who tells the story?
1. Cassie has a secret
2. A drum and a girl
3. Is it okay?
4. Double empathy
5. Missing Jon
6. Cassie is telling this story
7. Mum and Dad in our minds and in our hands
8. We cannot reach her
9. (same day): Here we are
10. Taming the waters that overwhelm us
11. The lightness of her
12. Her capture of me
Owen’s Story
1. This is Owen
2. A door ajar
3. Rest is a person
4. What just happened?
5. A return to proximity
6. Triads
7. Intangibles
8. To speak and be heard
9. Stories told about us
10. Leaving and returning
11. A defence against the cold
12. Being with
Reflections
Unlearning
Behaviour – Yours, mine and everyone else’s
Severe intellectual disabilities
What story are we telling?
When emotions have somewhere to go
Our shared emotional lives
Four frames for understanding our shared emotional lives
Projection
Containment
Transference
Enactments
Holding emotion
Reflective space and story
A place we call home
About families
Learning to listen again
Author:
Beverley Samways
