The research, all the research that we do is involved with looking at the quality of

life of people with intellectual disabilities and the project I'm going to talk

about is looking at people who have more severe intellectual disability who live

in group homes. And we know from previous research that the quality of their life

and their social engagement and inclusion is related to the quality of the staff

support that they get. So, our research question is about what makes staff do what

they do. What are the influences on the nature of the support that they give?

So we're trying to identify what are the factors that impact on staff behaviour and

the type of support they give, they do. So we are trying to identify how we can make a

difference to the quality of support that's provided. How we can change the way

organisations are structured, the way they behave, the messages they give to

staff, the type of leadership and practice coaching that they give to staff, the

way they organise themselves and if we can identify some of those key factors then

we'll be able to intervene and provide advice about how to improve the quality of

life of people with disabilities and improve staff support.

We spend an enormous amount of money on disability support services and quite

honestly some of them aren't particularly effective and the degree of social

inclusion particularly for people with more severe disabilities isn't very

good. This research will hopefully improve the quality of support that's

provided and the outcomes for people with intellectual disabilities so we're

getting more effective and more efficient support services.