Poelen sees the chair mainly as an impetus for a personalized approach in care: "People with mild intellectual disabilities and serious behavioural problems have complex and multiple issues, such as the combination of aggression and addiction. An appropriate and effective care offer for this target group depends greatly on the specific person. This requires customized care, and in research, we need to use a personalized approach to learn what works for different clients. We can gain and share new specialized knowledge to improve the quality of care for the client."
Education
In addition to a research assignment, a teaching role awaits Poelen as a professor. "For the next three years, I will be teaching Pedagogical Sciences students, the behavioural scientists of the future. They are often not yet familiar with the complex problems of people with mild intellectual disabilities and the specialized care provided by Pluryn. I hope to change that and, at the same time, create enthusiasm for working with this target group," said the professor.
About Evelien Poelen
Evelien Poelen (1979, Groesbeek) graduated from the Health Sciences program at Maastricht University in 2002. In 2008, she obtained her PhD from Radboud University and was a post-doc and lecturer at the Behavioural Science Institute at the same university until 2012. Since 2012, she has been working as a Senior Researcher at Pluryn. In recent years, her work included the substantiation of various interventions for people with mild intellectual disabilities.