Skip to main content
Kent Academic Repository

Observing practice leadership in intellectual and developmental disability services

Beadle-Brown, J., Bigby, C., Bould, E. (2015) Observing practice leadership in intellectual and developmental disability services. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 59 (12). pp. 1081-1093. ISSN 0964-2633. E-ISSN 1365-2788. (doi:10.1111/jir.12208) (KAR id:49010)

Abstract

Background

Improving staff performance is an issue in services for people with intellectual disability. Practice leadership, where the front line leader of a staff team focuses on service user outcomes in everything they do and provides coaching, modeling, supervision and organisation to the team, has been identified as important in improving staff performance. To date this finding is based only on self-report measures.

Methods

This paper describes and tests an observational measure of practice leadership based on an interview with the front-line manager, a review of paperwork and observations in 58 disability services in Australia.

Results

The measure showed good internal consistency and acceptable inter-rater reliability. Practice leadership was associated with staff practice and outcomes for service users. The observed measure of practice leadership appears to be a useful tool for assessing whether leadership within a service promotes enabling and empowering support by staff. It was found to discriminate higher and lower performing services in terms of active support.

Conclusions

The measure had good reliability and validity although some further testing is required to give a complete picture of the possible uses and reliability of the measure. The measure is potentially useful in contexts of both research and service development. The confirmation of previous findings from self-report measures that practice leadership is related to the quality of staff practice and outcomes for service users has implications for policy and practice in terms of the training of managers and structures for organisational management.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1111/jir.12208
Uncontrolled keywords: active support; intellectual disability; person-centred; practice leadership; service development
Subjects: H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
Divisions: Divisions > Division for the Study of Law, Society and Social Justice > School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research > Tizard
Depositing User: Julie Beadle-Brown
Date Deposited: 11 Jun 2015 19:33 UTC
Last Modified: 08 Dec 2022 23:14 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/49010 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

  • Depositors only (login required):

Total unique views for this document in KAR since July 2020. For more details click on the image.