Adult siblings are potentially important sources of care, support, advocacy, and friendship for their brothers and sisters with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Drawing on data about 851 adult siblings who completed an online national survey, we examined predictors and potential key moderators of siblings' mental distress,…

Background: Providing long-term care to an adult relative with intellectual disability can impact negatively on caregivers' health and well-being. Methods: Data were collected via online and postal questionnaires on 110 family carers' physical and psychological health, family stress and perceived positive gains from caring. Psychological…

Background: The Family Network Method -- Intellectual Disability (FNM-ID) was used to compare perspectives of people with mild intellectual disability and their support workers on family networks of people with intellectual disability. Method: 138 participants with mild intellectual disability and support workers were interviewed, using the…

Background: Clinicians recommend including carers or others in a supporting role in the therapy as an important adaptation of psychological therapies for people with intellectual disabilities. This nested qualitative study from a larger trial explored supporters' experiences of supporting people with intellectual disabilities receiving behavioural…

Background: Placement behaviours of families of adults with intellectual disabilities has received little or no attention of researches to date. Methods: A prospective design was adopted to examine changes in placement decisions of 75 family carers over a 12-month period. Factors associated with changes were also examined. Results: Over 12 months,…

There is growing evidence that acceptance and mindfulness interventions for support staff in intellectual disability (ID) services can have beneficial mental health outcomes for staff themselves and individuals with ID. However, there are few data focusing on the relevance of related psychological processes for support staff well-being. The…

A number of researchers have explored the attributions that care staff make about challenging behavior. The expectation, based on behavioral and cognitive models, is that these attributions may help predict why staff inadvertently reinforce challenging behavior. Two studies of staff attributions about challenging behavior are reported. In the…

Background: Hastings, R. P. ["American Journal on Mental Retardation" (2002) Vol. 107, pp. 455-467] hypothesized that staff negative emotional reactions to challenging behaviour might accumulate over time to affect staff well-being. Only one previous study (Mitchell, G.& Hastings, R. P. ["American Journal on Mental…

This article reviews literature on the responses of direct care staff to challenging behaviors of individuals with mental retardation. The paper constructs a behavior analytic description of the functions of care staff behavior in relation to their clients' challenging behaviors, draws a distinction between contingency-shaped and rule-governed…

Background: There is a high rate of physical violence in populations with intellectual disabilities, and this has been linked to problems for the victim, the assailant, members of staff and services. Despite the clinical significance of this behaviour, few studies have assessed methods of predicting its occurrence. The present study examined…