Attachment theory describes the dynamics of long-term relationships. Hazan and Shaver identified four styles of attachment: secure, anxious-preoccupied, dismissive-avoidant and fearful-avoidant. This pilot study set out to look at whether adults with mild/moderate learning disabilities could accurately self-report their attachment style. The authors also wanted to look at whether there was Any relationship between attachment [read the full story…]
A key component in any strategic service development is the consultation to seek the views of service users. This can prove problematic when consulting with people with learning disabilities, but a group of researchers in Worcestershire set out to do this in preparing a local challenging behaviour strategy They identified people to be involved in [read the full story…]
Researchers in Finland looked at medical problems in a population of people with Down syndrome and compared health surveillance to recommendations in national guidelines. They looked at case records from the specialist services in primary healthcare and disability services. They found many age-specific medical and surgical problems, including congenital heart defects and middle ear infections [read the full story…]
Previous studies have reported that the use of applied behaviour analysis by a specialist team in addition to standard treatment for adults with learning disabilities and challenging behaviour was both clinically effective and cost-effective after 6 months. This study reported a 2-year follow-up of the same trial cohort. The study found that participants who were [read the full story…]
Training for staff supporting people whose behaviour is challenging is a crucial part of appropriate and consistent supports. This study set out to provide a pilot evaluation of development workshops with direct care staff supporting people described as having significant psychosocial difficulties. The staff teams attended a series of workshops which were designed to use [read the full story…]
This study explored which client characteristics might be related to outcome during inpatient treatment. The study looked at 87 people with mild learning disabilities who were receiving inpatient treatment for severe behavioural problems and found a decrease in emotional and behavioural problems within a 1-year period of inpatient treatment. The authors found that gender and [read the full story…]
This study set out to investigate whether the triad of impairments and severe challenging behaviour had an impact on the lifestyle of adults living in staff-supported community housing using data collected on 427 adults living in 146 staffed houses. The authors found that after controlling for adaptive behaviour, there were no significant differences between those with [read the full story…]
Physical restraints were found to be in use for nearly 20% of more than 500 adults living in group homes in Sweden in the week preceding the study. 99.2% of these had been subjected to more than one type of restraint. The authors concluded physical restraints are frequently used in Sweden and that physical impairments [read the full story…]
This literature review looked at the evidence for environmental causes for challenging behaviours, looking at 173 empirical studies where functional assessment served as the primary method of identifying causes of challenging behaviour. Most studies identified a clear function or functions, most commonly attention, efforts to acquire tangibles, negative reinforcement in the form of escape and [read the full story…]
This literature review looked at evaluations of service provision in the UK for people with challenging behaviours, reviewing the literature from 1990 to 2010 looking at studies that evaluated a range of UK service provision in terms of impact on challenging behaviour and other quality of life indices. The author found very few evaluations, although [read the full story…]
