Approaches carers take in dealing with challenging behaviour in people with learning disabilities

Abstract

Challenging behaviours in people suffering from Learning Disabilities represent significant care problems for professional carers and are known to reduce the quality of care that they receive. These are a particularly vulnerable group of clients and as such any increase in the efficacy of carer input could be seen to improve the quality of their life experience. The aim of this phenomenologically influenced study was to consider approaches that carers take in dealing with challenging behaviour in people with a learning disability. The objectives of the study were 1. To see what information care staff had about challenging behaviour. 2. How they themselves dealt with these challenges. 3. To see what they wished as a way to ameliorate their knowledge to find better solutions to treating such behaviour. A letter distributed by hand was given to each proposed interviewee explaining the research. Those who decided to participate handed back a signed consent saying that they agreed. Seventeen interviews were undertaken and all the sample were care staff at one adult training center in Malta. Interviews were audio taped and transcribed. Data was analyzed manually using content analyses, identifying prominent themes and ascribing them, where appropriate, to the literature. It was identified that care staff know much about challenging behaviours and the reasons for them occurring. However, they showed a need to know how to establish these precipitating factors and where to find information about effective interventions that would both deal with the behaviours and prevent or minimize them in the future. It was also hard for them to distinguish between the different types and different stages of challenging behaviours. Recommendations for reducing clients' challenging behaviours are produced and include more socializing and social inclusion, ongoing field learning and education, teamwork and cohesiveness, more autonomy, the formation of a multidisciplinary team taking a multidisciplinary approach thus filling most of the gaps in the system, staff motivation, further studies and more intensive education in the pre-employment phase.