Outcome evaluation of active support training in Taiwan

Abstract

Active Support was implemented for the first time in Taiwan in March, 2009. This study aims to evaluate whether the supervisors and front line managers of residential services receiving Active Support Training (AST) caused a positive impact on their users with intellectual disabilities (ID) while comparing this with their counterparts with ID whose residential staff were not being involved in the training. The nonequivalent groups design was used for the evaluation; the participants included 49 residents of 12 community living homes as the experimental group and 19 residents of another 5 community living homes as the comparative group. The pretest evaluation was conducted before the AST and the post-test and follow-up evaluations were conducted following 4 months and 14 months after the pre-test respectively. The assessment package contained questionnaires relating to domestic engagement, community inclusion, choice, social network, mood scales, challenging behaviors, adaptive behavior and demographic questions among the residents with ID. Within the group, analyses showed that the residents whose staff received AST showed increased levels of choice and adaptive behavior and decreased levels of depression in the post-test and follow up in addition the residents' engagement in domestic activities improved in the follow up. The intervention did not affect the frequency of family contact, community inclusion and challenging behavior among the residents. The residents in the comparative group showed no significant change except the levels of depression decreased comparing follow-up test and post-test. Based on a cross groups comparison of the effect of the intervention among the residents, only a decreased level of depression was found in the post-test results of the both groups. This study suggests Active Support is practicable but only partially effective in Taiwan; thus, conducting an AST Package of Taiwan version is expectable.