Behavioural staff training in social care for adults with autism and learning disabilities

: evaluating organisational strategies to enhance skills acquisition and generalisation across teams.

Abstract

Staff training in Positive Behaviour Support (PBS), in adult social care, has been the focus in an increasing number of studies. The positive outcomes of such training, primary for staff, have been reported. There is still, however, a need to explore further the variables that lead to an effective training. The evidence in relation to change in staff and service user behaviour and the impact of organisational behaviour management systems (OBM) on effectiveness, generalization and maintenance of these outcomes were explored in a systematic literature review (SLR) and two applied studies that took part in a residential facility that provides adult social care for individuals with autism and learning disabilities. The results of the SLR showed that most articles that met the inclusion criteria reported using organisational strategies to support staff training e.g. giving the responsibility to the trainees to transfer their training to the rest of the team, but limited number of studies had adequate methodological strength. It was also found that despite the fact that behaviour change was reported for staff, quality of life for the service users, as a result of staff training, was not reported. On the basis of these findings, the applied studies focussed on investigating the impact of a customised behavioural staff training and evaluating the organisational strategies to enhance skills acquisition and generalisation across teams, using multiple baseline across group of participants and AB-type of designs. The independent variable for both applied studies was a customised behavioural training that a group of direct care staff attended. The results of the first study showed that staff who attended training and the resident with whom they worked made progress overall. They did not, however, all meet mastery or maintained criteria and the generalisation of skills across the staff team was also limited. In the second study, an antecedent OBM strategy was applied as follows: staff in a different care home were told that they had the responsibility to teach the new skills they learned during the training to their colleagues who had not attended the training. At the same time, staff who did not attend the training were instructed to learn from the staff who had attended the training. The results of the application of this addition of OBM strategy, demonstrated improved skills for trained staff and residents as well as for generalization of skills across the staff team. Implications of the study for future research and for practise are discussed.

Date of Award	Dec 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Queen's University Belfast
Sponsors	Green Lights PBS Ltd
Supervisor	Karola Dillenburger (Supervisor) & Devon Ramey (Supervisor)