Uncovering staff culture

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Uncovering the staff culture of good quality supported accommodation for people with intellectual disabilities

• IRAS ID

  188142

• Contact name

  Julie Beadle-Brown

• Contact email

  J.D.Beadle-Brown@kent.ac.uk

• Duration of Study in the UK

  1 years, 11 months, 30 days

• Research summary

  Improving outcomes for adults with intellectual disabilities living in supported accommodation remains a significant issue. Research has shown that a powerful factor in determining better outcomes includes whether staff use an enabling approach to support; i.e active support (Mansell and Beadle-Brown, 2012).

  Establishing and maintaining good staff practices can be difficult. The culture within a service has been suggested to influence how staff work. Working from Schein’s (1992) definition, “Culture” refers to the way staff perceive, think and feel in relation to their day-to-day work and how they work together to solve the problems they encounter.

  Very little research has explored culture in supported accommodation. Bigby and colleagues in Australia identified 5 dimensions of culture applicable to both underperforming and better performing supported accommodation services. Further work is now needed to explore the application of the domains to high-performing services where outcomes are much better.

  This study will explore:
  1) the nature of the culture in supported accommodation achieving good outcomes for people with severe and profound intellectual disabilities
  2) the relationships between culture of a setting and the wider organisation
  3) the aspects of culture that might explain better staff support and good resident outcomes.
  The knowledge gained will be used to inform leadership and management practices in organisations, with the aim of improving outcomes for those supported.

  The methods include:
  1. Participant observation in three settings over a year.
  2. Naturalistic Interviews with staff.
  3. Review of organisational documents - policies, procedures, mission statements.
  4. Interviews with management to establish their views of culture in supported accommodation services and the wider organisation

  The observations and interviews will be collated as case studies for each organisation and a synthesis of data across the cases will be conducted. Findings will be compared to those found in the research from Australia.

• REC name

  Social Care REC

• REC reference

  15/IEC08/0054

• Date of REC Opinion

  9 Oct 2015

• REC opinion

  Favourable Opinion