Mindful Together
Samantha Flynn from Education Studies has co-authored a report on the impact of an online mindfulness programme from the perception of family careers of people with Intellectual and Development Disabilities.
Read the Report
Executive Summary
The 天美传媒 team worked closely with four project partners (Sibs, Family Fund, the Foundation for People with Learning Disabilities (FPLD), and Contact) to complete an implementation project of an online mindfulness programme (Be Mindful) with additional peer mentor support for family carers of people with learning disabilities and/or of autistic people with the aim of reducing their stress and increasing their wellbeing.
A team of ten parent and five adult sibling peer mentors were successfully recruited through project partners and trained to deliver the peer mentoring element of the project. They were successfully matched with family carers throughout the project period.
The University team completed an evaluation of the project, including questionnaires with family carer participants before and after they started the intervention, and again 12-weeks later, interviews with peer mentors, and interviews with some family carer participants.
We were particularly successful in recruiting siblings to be peer mentors, and to take part in the intervention; however, we recruited fewer brothers than sisters. Successfully recruiting and engaging brothers is an area for exploration in future.
When interviewed, peer mentors described having overwhelmingly positive and meaningful experiences within their role. Further, peer mentors were able to develop transferable skills for future employment, which contributed to their reported increased confidence.
Family carers reported experiencing a wide array of benefits from their engagement in the mindfulness programme and peer mentoring, including improved wellbeing, greater acceptance and reflection within their caring role and about themselves, benefits to family, and improved relationships.
Some of the difficulties faced in recruiting family carers to this project may be due to renewed interest in receiving face-to-face support and fostering a sense of community for family carers following the necessity of online/virtual support during the COVID-19 pandemic and related restrictions.
The reflections from the University team and the project partners to inform future projects include having a more inclusive peer mentor application process, running separate training sessions for parent and sibling peer mentors, having a translation budget for materials, and specifically recruiting peer mentors who speak additional languages to promote inclusion of family carers who speak English as an additional language.
Academic papers referenced within the report
Flynn, S., Gordon-Brown, A., Lunsky, Y., Weiss, J., Hayden, N., Murray, C., Burke, C., Howes, S., Mahon, D., & Hastings, R.P. (2026). Family carers of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities鈥� perceptions of the impacts of online mindfulness: A qualitative study. Mindfulness.
Gordon-Brown, A., Murray, C., Hayden, N., Hastings, R.P., Mahon, D., & Flynn, S. (2025). 鈥淵ou understand me鈥�: Experiences of peer mentors delivering support for a mindfulness intervention to family carers of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 38(4), e70102.
Murray, C. A., Hayden, N. K., Gordon-Brown, A., Flynn, S., Bonetree, C., Harper, A., Kassa, C., Mahon, D., McGee, C., & Hastings, R. P. (2025). Brief Report: Implementation of online mindfulness with peer mentoring for parent and sibling carers of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Journal of Intellectual Disabilities Research, 1-8.
