New Report on Injuries and Challenging Behaviour

Some people with intellectual or developmental disabilities (ID/DD) can behave aggressively toward others and injuries sometimes result. At St.Amant, direct-care employees are trained to prevent injuries resulting from challenging behaviour. However, it is not completely known how effective current training programs are in assisting staff to respond to real life situations.
A research team at St.Amant is working hard to answer this question. The goal is to understand how injuries occur and what factors affect staff’s ability to prevent injuries by applying their training. The team includes Drs. Beverley Temple, Toby Martin and Charmayne Dube as well as Rose Schwarz, Chris Fyfe, Lesley Anne Fuga and Trevor Farley.
Team members are interviewing staff and studying written reports to find out more about how to keep workers and people with ID/DD safe from injuries associated with challenging behaviour. Minimizing challenging behaviour and responding with appropriate skills and techniques when it does occur would result in safer environments for our staff as well as for the people we serve, resulting in a better quality of life for all.
A summary of preliminary findings from the review of written injury reports is now available.
This study is funded by the Workers Compensation Board of Manitoba. More results to follow!