„It’s very good, that they have each other” – Persons with high support needs and their friendships

The goal of this paper is to present, from a Disability Studies perspective, how friendship can be interpreted in the lives of people with high support needs. By exploring both their opportunities and their difficulties, the study is looking for solutions to the problems of building friendships. The main research question is, how friendship can be interpreted in the lives of people with high support needs, and what possibilities they have in experiencing friendships. To answer this, a case study was conducted with two adults with high support needs with the method of participant observation, and two assistants, as well as mothers contributed to the work through semi-structured interviews. The definitions of friendship found in the literature are typically written by abled bodied, non-disabled researchers and therefore do not provide an interpretation that may be relevant to the life of a person with high support needs. The experience of the present study shows that, contrary to the above-mentioned oppressive theories, it is possible to define and examine the friendship of the persons concerned, through aspects such as eye contact, smile, verbal and nonverbal communication, and joint action that can be interpreted also within the interactions with the environment.