Staff support strategies to increase the involvement of individuals with disabilities in meal preparation

Abstract

In recent years, residential services for persons with disabilities have changed radically, reflecting a shift from custodial care to habilitation and community participation. This has resulted in a significant shift in the roles of direct‐care staff. Improvement of staff performance is recognized as a major objective of agencies providing residential support to persons with disabilities. This study examined the gap between existing technologies of support and performance of direct‐care staff, and focused on participation in an important activity of daily living, meal preparation. This study compared initial, baseline levels of participation to levels of involvement observed during three experimental intervention phases introduced sequentially within a multiple‐baseline design: staff prompting by interventionists, staff self‐management, and staff training. Increases from baseline levels of participation were observed for all five participating staff‐resident dyads. High levels of variability were observed in some dyads and amounts of increase differed across dyads. Findings are explained in terms of dyad‐specific information. A model of staff performance is presented along with implications for high‐quality residential service.