Abstract:
Community support staff (CSW) have been identified as playing a vital role in the support for individuals with an intellectual disability or developmental disability. CSW were found to facilitate the engagement of their clients via interactions or providing opportunities to interact with others. Factors such as stress, presence of behaviour or concern and staff
knowledge were found to be potential barriers for effective staff-client interactions. Research
in the current literature used mindfulness and a variety of different intervention such as prompting to help improve staff engagement. Mindfulness was found to be more cost effective and easier to implement among the interventions used. The current study used
mindfulness to investigate its effects on staff engagement and extend the current literature.
Staff engagement was measured in terms of duration in order to investigate the potential benefits of mindfulness on the quality of staff-client interactions. Client indices of happiness,
staff use of verbal reprimand and staff psychological flexibility were also measured to better
investigate the full effects of mindfulness training. The study found little impact for
mindfulness on the three variables measured and staff engagement as a whole. It was speculated that a difference in the dosage of the intervention and complications of the COVID-19 had an influence on the results of this study. Complications such as lockdowns affected staff availability and may have affected other factors such as staff stress levels. Due to this, the current study may have found less change in staff behaviour compared to other
studies of the current literature, but not an absence of change.
