Correlates of direct care staffs' attitudes towards aggression of persons with intellectual disabilities.
Team climate shapes staff views of aggression more than any single worker trait.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The authors asked 475 direct-care staff how they view client aggression.
They also recorded each worker’s age, gender, and team climate.
Client psychiatric labels were noted too.
What they found
Team climate mattered most.
If the whole team saw aggression as bad, every worker on that team did too.
Workers also held tougher views when clients had psychiatric diagnoses.
How this fits with other research
Cashon et al. (2013) saw the same pattern earlier with a smaller group.
Both papers say: fix the team, not just the person.
Whitehouse et al. (2014) went further and showed a half-day “Who’s Challenging Who” class can soften these views right away.
So the 2016 map of attitudes pairs with the 2014 fix-it plan.
Why it matters
You now know staff attitudes come from the room, not just the resume.
Run a quick team huddle before you train lone staff.
Add a short WCW module if you need fast change.
Track team mood like you track client data.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND AND AIM: To explain direct care staff's attitudes (responsive or rejecting) towards aggression of clients with intellectual disability (ID), data were collected about client characteristics as well as individual and team characteristics of 475 direct care staff members, working in 71 teams. METHOD AND RESULTS: Multilevel analyses revealed that a positive team climate was positively associated with both a rejecting and responsive attitude towards aggression. Senior staff members and females showed a less responsive attitude towards aggression, whereas a relatively high percentage of females in a team and a positive attitude towards external professionals were associated with a more responsive attitude towards aggression. Unexpectedly, staff who experienced less verbal and/or physical aggressive incidents of their clients with ID showed a more rejecting attitude towards aggression. Finally, characteristics of the clients with ID accounted for the largest part of the variance in the attitude towards aggression of direct care staff, in particular psychiatric diagnoses. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Further research is necessary in order to understand how team processes affect the attitude towards aggression of direct care staff. Further it is recommended to provide direct care staff with knowledge about mental disorders in clients with ID.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2016 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2016.09.008