The past 20 years have witnessed a movement away from hospital-based care and accommodation for people with learning difficulties towards dispersed housing in the community. This affects not only the users of such services but also the staff employed to work with them. Because of this, it is important to closely monitor whether the need for staff support and staff development is being met appropriately. This article discusses the results of a survey carried out by Mansfield and Ashfield Community Mental Handicap Team to evaluate such service provision by interviewing the managers of residential services. It was found that the areas of largest perceived shortfall between need and provision were meetings between staff from different residential units and training in the skills of counselling, keyworking and liaising with the relatives of service users. The implications of the survey for service planning and future research are discussed.
Levels of challenging behaviour were studied in a sample of 16 people who moved from a hospital to community settings. Ratings on the Challenging Behaviour Scales showed that aggression to residents decreased significantly. Aggression to staff and self-injurious behaviour showed non-significant downward trends but destruction of objects continued at prior levels. The study concluded that caution needs to be taken in using rating scales, and results from them should always be backed up by other evidence.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.