Staff supporting people with intellectual disabilities and mental health problems

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511543616.025

24 - Staff supporting people with intellectual disabilities and mental health problems

from Part IV - Policy and service systems

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 December 2009

Chris Hatton and

Fiona Lobban

Edited by

Nick Bouras and

Geraldine Holt

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Chris Hatton: Affiliation:
Professor of Psychology, Health and Social Care, Institute for Health Research, Lancaster University
Fiona Lobban: Affiliation:
Senior Lecturer in Clinical Psychology, Division of Clinical Psychology, Liverpool University
Nick Bouras: Affiliation:
King's College London
Geraldine Holt: Affiliation:
King's College London

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Summary

Introduction

Staff supporting people with intellectual disabilities (ID) constitute a significant workforce. Although precise statistics are unavailable, there were an estimated 83 000 staff in England working with people with ID in 1999 (Ward, 1999); estimates for the USA in 2000 were well over 600 000 support staff (Hewitt & Lakin, 2001). Given the relatively high proportion of people with ID who also experience mental health problems and the general lack of mental health services for people with ID in the UK and elsewhere (Bailey & Cooper, 1997; Bouras and Holt 2004), a significant proportion of staff will be supporting at least one person with ID and a mental health problem (Quigley et al., 2001).

In many countries around the world, services supporting people with ID have shifted from predominantly state-run institutional services to community-based services provided by diverse agencies (Braddock et al., 2001). This shift has led to a workforce characterized by:

Large proportions of unqualified staff (75% estimated in England; Ward, 1999; 73% in the USA; Larson et al., 1998).
Support staff being predominantly young, inexperienced at supporting people with ID, female, and without dependants (Hatton et al., 1999b; Larson et al., 1998).
High staff turnover and vacancy rates. In UK residential services, staff annual turnover rates have been estimated between 18% and 25%, with services reporting vacancy rates of 6%–10% (Ward, 1999). In the USA, staff annual turnover rates are much higher, particularly in independent sector services (e.g. 50%–75% independent sector versus 20%–25% state-run; Larson et al., 2002), with correspondingly high vacancy rates (e.g. 12%; Larson et al., 1998).
[…]

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Type: Chapter
Information: Psychiatric and Behavioural Disorders in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities , pp. 388 - 399

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511543616.025 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2007

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