Abstract:
Adults with intellectual disability may display low levels of activity engagement without the
direct support of staff and caregivers. This can result in a decrease in emotional and physical
wellbeing and an increase in challenging behaviours that further impact upon their quality of
life. The present study aimed to design an effective and acceptable behavioural skills training
package for teaching support staff to use the check-in procedure with their client participants.
The check-in procedure is a simple behavioural intervention that involves staff regularly
checking in with a client and providing praise or a choice of activities to increase activity
engagement. As a baseline measurement of staff performance, staff initially received didactic
teaching, which involved reading a technical description of the intervention derived from
Engstrom et al. (2015). They were then asked to attend a behavioural skills training session
delivered by the researcher. A two-leg multiple baseline design was used to examine the
effects of training and check-in procedure on staff performance and participant engagement.
Results show that staff performed the majority of the steps of the intervention correctly
following didactic teaching. However, they required behavioural skills training to meet the
performance criterion. Participants also showed an immediate increase in levels of
appropriate engagement following didactic teaching, but behavioural skills training did not
further increase their engagement. These findings suggest that behavioural skills training
successfully taught staff to use the check-in procedure and the intervention was also effective
in increasing activity engagement among the participants with intellectual disability.
