Staff strategies and explanations for intervening with challenging behaviours: a replication in a community sample

Carers' beliefs about challenging behaviours may partially determine their behavioural responses to them. The present study replicated previous work on the beliefs of institution staff and their explanations about interventions for challenging behaviours (Hastings 1996) with a sample of 56 community staff. Many immediate intervention strategies, and the staff motivation for these choices, were in conflict with behavioural approaches to challenging behaviour and would be considered counter-habilitative from this perspective. Staff were able to describe appropriate longer-term interventions. These basic findings confirmed those of previous research with institution staff. However, tentative comparisons suggested that community staff were more likely than institution staff (from previous research) to describe interventions involving the building of relationships with service users and the identification of the underlying causes of the behaviours.