Familiarizing New Staff for Working with Adults with Severe Disabilities: a Case for Relationship Building
Twenty minutes of shared fun plus gradual hand-off makes new staff instantly more effective with adults who have severe disabilities.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Parsons et al. (2016) tested a quick way to make new staff click with adults who have severe disabilities.
First the staff spent twenty minutes doing a favorite activity with the resident. Then they slowly joined the normal routine.
The team watched six adults and compared days with familiarized staff against days with brand-new helpers.
What they found
When staff used the two-step familiarization, adults followed directions more, stayed on task longer, and looked happier.
The gains showed up right away and held steady across all six residents.
How this fits with other research
Jerome et al. (2008) already showed adults will work harder for staff they prefer. Parsons gives you a fast recipe to create that preference.
Guercio et al. (2025) took the idea further. They let staff pick their own reinforcers and hit 80% data fidelity. Together the papers say: build staff-client liking first, then use the same principle to keep staff accurate.
Older work tried heavier training. Cameron et al. (1996) ran a communication class and saw only tiny staff gains with no resident change. Parsons got bigger client improvements with a 20-minute hangout, suggesting a brief relationship start beats long lectures.
Why it matters
You can copy this Monday. Spend the first twenty minutes pairing yourself or a new RBT with a preferred game or snack, then fade into the program. No extra cost, no slide deck, and the resident compliance and happiness boost is immediate. It’s a low-effort guard against the "new staff = bad day" pattern we all see in group homes.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
In human service agencies, situations exist at various times in which consumers are not familiar with the staff who work with them. We evaluated effects of familiar versus unfamiliar staff working with two men with severe disabilities in a vocational program. Results indicated both participants displayed more compliance with familiar staff relative to unfamiliar staff and one exhibited more on-task (one was near ceiling levels with both staff). Subsequently, a familiarization process was conducted with four new staff before working with four men with severe disabilities that involved spending time with a participant in a preferred activity and phasing in to the participant’s routine. Each staff worked with one participant after being familiarized and concurrently with another without being familiarized. In all but one case, participant compliance was greater with the familiarized staff. Except when on-task was near ceiling levels, it also was higher with the familiarized staff. Additionally, results offered some support for the existence of a good relationship between familiarized staff and participants in terms of more participant happiness indices than with unfamiliar staff and, to a smaller degree, less unhappiness indices and problem behavior. Implications for practitioners are discussed, including being aware of potential problems when unfamiliar staff work with adults with severe disabilities and considering familiarizing new staff prior to working with individuals. Discussion also addresses how more attention could be directed to relationship development from a practitioner and research perspective.
Behavior Analysis in Practice, 2016 · doi:10.1007/s40617-016-0129-9