Employed carers' empathy towards people with learning disabilities.

Section A presents the hypothesis that attachment representations determine individuals’ capacities for empathy, which is necessary for sensitive and responsive caregiving. It reviews the evidence pertaining to whether this hypothesis applies within the context of employed caregivers caring for adults with learning disabilities. The evidence is considered in a stepwise fashion, based on four literature searches. The paper concludes by considering the implications of this literature for clinical practice and future research.
Section B is an empirical research paper which describes the development of a new questionnaire aiming to measure employed carers’ empathy towards people with learning disabilities. It describes how investigation of the questionnaire’s factor structure illuminated the salient processes that may influence empathy in this specific relational context. It presents evidence of the questionnaire’s construct validity, internal reliability and test-retest reliability. The results are linked to existing literature and recommendations for clinical practice are made. Limitations of the study and directions for future research are considered.