Background: Intrusive interventions, once implemented, may remain in place longer than necessary unless their continued effectiveness is evaluated. Method: We conducted a phased timeout-evaluation for 34 individuals with developmental disabilities who received services from the same agency and whose treatment programmes contained timeout for…

Background: There is little research on the safety of the various types of restraint commonly used with individuals with intellectual disabilities who exhibit severely aggressive or self-injurious behaviour. Method: This study analysed the use of restraint with 209 individuals with intellectual disabilities over a 12-month period. Results: Planned…

Background: A health service in an English city was concerned about its support to families with adults with intellectual disabilities and challenging behaviour. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven minority ethnic and seven majority ethnic family members to explore perceptions of challenging behaviour, support and the…

Background: The aim of this study was to reevaluate the reliability (internal consistency, inter-rater and re-test) and the factor structure of the Behavior Problems Inventory (BPI-01) with adults with intellectual disabilities who resided in a state-run developmental centre. Methods: BPI-01 was administered to informants who had known…

Background: Twenty-six young people with intellectual disabilities and mental health needs from Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities were recruited as part of a bigger study to examine the effectiveness of a liaison worker in helping young people and their families access appropriate intellectual disabilities and mental health services. Method:…

Background: The ability of descriptive assessments to differentiate functions of problem behaviours might be increased by systematically sampling natural contexts characterized by different establishing operations. This study evaluated the stability of such characteristics, and variability in challenging behaviour, for three school contexts.…

Background: Positive behavioural support is increasingly viewed as the preferred service approach for people who challenge, but skills are insufficiently widespread. The need for effective staff training has been highlighted as a key factor in high quality service provision, with investigators recommending a multidimensional approach to increase…

Background: The working culture surrounding challenging behaviour may have a strong effect on staff behaviour. As a first step to influencing staff talk about challenging behaviour, the aim of the present study was to explore whether a 1-day training workshop could have an effect on staff causal explanations. Methods: Fifty-four front line staff,…

Background: Reliable measures of aggressive challenging behaviour are required if interventions aimed at reducing this behaviour among people with intellectual disability (ID) are to be formally evaluated. The present authors examined the reliability of the Modified Overt Aggression Scale (MOAS), an instrument not yet formally tested in those with…

Background: Many authors have expressed concern regarding the efficacy of psychotherapy, including psychotherapy for people with intellectual disabilities. Materials and Methods: Recently, many authors have made claims for the effectiveness of cognitive therapy for treating people with intellectual disabilities. During this debate, applied…

Background: Sexual abuse has been associated with trauma, low self-esteem, anger, depression and challenging behaviours. This pilot study builds on a small published literature by evaluating a survivors group (SG) for women with an intellectual disability and an educational support group (ESG) for their carers. Method: The SG was delivered weekly…

Background: The study concerns the unknown value of group instruction for mothers of young children with Down syndrome (DS) in preventing or minimizing sleep problems. Method: (1) Children with DS were randomly allocated to an Instruction group (given basic information about children's sleep) and a Control group for later comparison including…