Suchergebnisse

AbstractObservational measures of client engagement and staff‐client contact were taken of 33 people attending a day centre for adults with mental handicap. A low ability group were engaged in constructive activity for 22%, a middle ability group for 46% and a high ability group for 66% of the observations. Assuming a notional 5‐hour 'working' day in the centre, people in the low ability group were engaged for, on average, 66 minutes; people in the middle group for 2 hours 18 minutes; and people in the high ability group for 3 hours 18 minutes. The most common disengagement code for the highest ability group (53% of disengaged observations) was 'inactivity' ‐ people were either spectating or doing nothing although they had materials available. For the middle and low ability groups the most common codes were 'waiting' (e.g. for staff, client, materials to work with) and 'not allowed or enabled to participate in activity by member(s) of staff (e.g. not included in a team game, not given necessary materials with which to participate, not given anything to do). Together these accounted for over half of the 'disengaged' time of the middle and low ability groups: i.e. the low ability group spent, on average, 2 hours and 18 minutes waiting or not enabled to participate out of a notional 5 hour 'working' day. The implications of these results are discussed.