Changing care staff approaches to the prevention and management of aggressive behaviour in a residential treatment unit for persons with mental retardation and challenging behaviour.

The impact of a new training procedure aimed at improving staff skills in the preventative and reactive management of severely challenging behaviours was investigated within a six-place residential treatment unit. The results showed that there was some evidence to support the notion that the training reduced the number of behavioural incidents for most residents. The rates of major reactive strategy use (restraint and emergency medication) also declined over time, as did rates of staff and resident injury. Although only a limited number of these changes showed statistically significant correlations with time, it is argued that they were clinically significant when viewed against the complexity of the client group under study.