Sheeran, Anne; (1999) The team climate in residential care homes for adults with a learning disability who display challenging behaviour: A group level analysis. Doctoral thesis (D.Clin.Psy.), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This cross-sectional survey in residential care homes for people with learning disabilities who display challenging behaviour used a group level analysis of the extent of challenging behaviours and of the organisational features of the homes. Measures of team climate were used as an assessment of team functioning and, particularly, of a team's capacity to innovate. New interventions with challenging behaviours, by the team and by external agents such as psychologists and other clinicians, are characterised as innovations, in the specific sense that they represent a novel application of ways of working in that context. Staff working in 44 residential care homes completed Team Climate Inventories, an assessment of their level of functioning as a team, and Checklists of Challenging Behaviour, as an assessment of the levels of challenging behaviour m the homes overall. It was hypothesised that there would be lower levels of team functioning in homes where there were higher levels of challenging behaviour. The results of this study tentatively confirm that hypothesis. Managers of the homes were interviewed about the way in which they and their team managed challenging behaviour. A content analytic procedure was used to categorise their responses. Six superordinate categories, in three pairs, were generated, which corresponded to the ways in which the behaviours were managed or contained, the ways in which there were benefits or deficits in the processes of the team working together, and the ways in which the interventions by external clinicians were conceptualised. It is suggested that such a group level analysis offers an additional dimension m which ecobehavioural assessment and interventions with challenging behaviour by psychologists can be set, so that the functions of the whole team and the overall levels of challenging behaviour in homes can be taken into account, rather than a purely functional analytic approach which considers behaviour at an individualised level. Implications for further research are suggested.

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