STAFF BEHAVIOR AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR PEOPLE WITH LEARNING-DISABILITIES AND CHALLENGING BEHAVIORS

Many people with learning disabilities engage in challenging behaviour s which, behaviour analytic models suggest, are social behaviours sens itive to the actions of others in the environment. In this paper, the research literature on the behaviour of staff, especially that pertain ing to interactions with people with challenging behaviours, is review ed. Empirical evidence is found to support the hypothesis that staff a ctions affect clients' challenging behaviours. In addition, studies of staff behaviour shaw that their behaviour is often counter-habilitati ve. Firstly, staff spend little time interacting with clients and the quality of these interactions is often poor. Secondly, observational s tudies have shown that staff respond intermittently to challenging beh aviours, and self-report studies indicate that many of these responses are of a nature that may reinforce such behaviours. Finally, although limited, evidence suggests that behavioural programmes for clients wi th challenging behaviours are rare and where they do exist they are of ten not carried out by staff. To date, interventions for staff behavio ur (training and management approaches) have acted to change these way s of behaving but have not been founded on adequate analyses of staff action. A call is made for analyses of staff behaviour, and other impl ications for research and practical work with staff are discussed.