Evaluating and improving residential treatment during group leisure situations: An independent replication
✍ Scribed by Peter Sturmey
- Book ID
- 101712244
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1995
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 498 KB
- Volume
- 10
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1072-0847
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
This study reports an independent replication of Parson and Reid's (1993) Group active treatment procedure for adults with developmental disabilities. This study differed from the earlier study in that it took place over a 12-month period, and involved all scheduled leisure activities from Monday through Sunday at all scheduled times of the day. In this study maladaptive behaviors decreased, the percentage of clients with materials increased, the percentage of clients receiving interactions increased, and the percentage of clients receiving social reinforcement increased as a function of the introduction of the Group active treatment. The data in the intervention phase were highly variable indicating that staff performance was a function of variables other than the intervention. Nevertheless, this procedure lead to a sustained improvement in the use of leisure time throughout the intervention period.
Concern with active treatment in institutional settings has been repeatedly voiced, both in the United States (Reid & Parsons, 1990) and elsewhere (Sturmey & Crisp, 1991). The continuous provision of active treatment is a requirement of Intermediate Care Facilities for the Mentally Retarded (ICF-MR), and is a goal which receives high social validation from professionals (Parsons, Cash, & Reid, 1989). However, activity levels in many residential settings are often low (Parsons et al., 1989;Crisp & Sturmey, 1988). Lack of active treatment is also a commonly cited ICF-MR deficiency.
Although the ICF-MR accreditation process attempts to evaluate active treatment, empirical evaluation of the accreditation process has not been positive. Research indicates that the accreditation process is reactive (Reid, Parsons, Green, & Schepis, 1991), fails to discriminate between accredited and nonaccredited facilities (Reid et al., 1991;Repp & Barton, 1980), and lacks social validity from consumers such as facility superintendents (Reid et al., 1991). To date, behavioral staff management is the most extensively evaluated group of methods