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Background: Psychomotor therapy enables people to reflect on the relationship between experiences and feelings by starting from awareness of bodily responses rather than from awareness of emotion. In this study we examine PsyMot (ID), an assessment that directs this psychological therapy. Method: Twelve suitable consecutive admissions were recruited from a specialist intellectual disability (ID) assessment and treatment unit for adults. Video-recordings of PsyMot (ID) allowed assessment of interrater reliability (IRR). Treatment goals indicated by PsyMot (ID) were addressed using psychomotor therapy as part of a comprehensive program of interventions. Results: Psychomotor therapy was both feasible and popular with patients who participated without any adverse effects. Nine patients completed PsyMot (ID). IRR of the treatment goals identified by all 3 raters was good to excellent in 81% cases, but there were discrepancies for individual items. Conclusions: PsyMot (ID) and psychomotor therapy is feasible within this context, and enriched the clinical team's formulation. Further studies of reliability and efficacy should be undertaken.

Recruitment onto pre-registration learning disability nursing courses has decreased considerably over the last decade. This paper reports the findings of the first stage of a longitudinal study that investigated the factors that influence students to train as learning disability nurses, and those that influence their decision to continue or leave the course. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with one cohort of learning disability student nurses (n = 19) within the first 6 months of their starting the Common Foundation Programme. A number of unexpected issues emerged. These revolved around the negativity displayed by some practitioners and tutors about learning disability nursing and how this in turn was impacting on the decision made by four of the students in particular to transfer to other branches of nursing. The paper concludes with some recommendations for Schools of Nursing to ensure that the speciality is seen as an attractive and worthwhile career option.

The present study aimed to compare the level and pattern of cognitive deficits in patients with early-onset psychoses with an age, gender and IQ matched control group. In order to ensure a representative sample of patients with psychoses, participants with an IQ of less than 70 were included. Forty-eight patients with an onset of psychoses before the age of 16, and 47 age, gender and IQ matched controls without psychoses were recruited. Psychotic symptomatology was assessed using the Schedules for Clinical Assessment to obtain DSM-IV and ICD-10 diagnoses. Positive and negative symptoms were assessed using the Positive and Negative Symptoms Scale. Levels of cognitive function were measured using a comprehensive neuropsychological battery. A pattern of specific impairments was not found, with few significant differences between the two cohorts. However both cohort groups performed lower than age derived norms. Therefore it appears that there are global cognitive deficits rather than specific deficits in early-onset psychoses when compared to normative data, in-line with conclusions of early-onset schizophrenia research, but patients did not have greater deficit than controls when matched on IQ, gender and age, even after excluding participants with IQ less than 70. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Transforming Care is making mixed progress in supporting people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and complex needs, move to more appropriate specialist accommodations closer to home. Community support staff often spend greatest amounts of time with service-users, yet are some of the least heard voices about why placements succeed and fail to varying extents., Method: Managers and support staff (n = 13), working in ostensibly "specialist" community placements, were interviewed about perceived barriers and facilitators to implementing Transforming Care. Transcripts were subjected to thematic analysis., Results: Participants identified difficulties balancing people's rights, safety and quality of life needs, and felt the system's expectations of them are hard to deliver within the resources, legislation, values and support models provided them. Multidisciplinary expertise was highly valued for both emotional and practical support, but was least valued when perceived as overly blaming or inspectorial. Specialist health input was seen to withdraw prematurely for this particular client group., Conclusion: Recommendations are provided for how staff perspectives should inform Transforming Care in interests of service-users., (© 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Although bullying has been shown to reduce quality of life in many spheres, anti-bullying strategies have yet to be incorporated into services for adults with severe intellectual disability (ID). The present study employed a survey of staff and parent concerns about 54 previously surveyed students who had left a school for pupils with severe ID. A content analysis of follow-up interviews was performed in 10 cases. Staff identified 19% of the survey sample as bullying others and 11% as being picked on. Neither gender nor communication ability had an impact. There was no significant change in bully or victim status over time, although some people did change. Parents or staff raised bully/victim problems in more than half of the interviews. There is sufficient evidence of bullying behaviour to warrant the adoption of anti-bullying strategies.

Goal planning is an integral part of the role of the key worker in services for people with intellectual disability. The present study investigated the effect of the Weiner stability-expectancy principle on unexpected outcomes in goal planning. Four hundred and twenty-two actual goal attainment scales were constructed, with each scale describing the key workers' expected levels of outcome. Two hundred and twenty-six (54%) unexpected outcomes, both successful and unsuccessful, were then rated by key workers to provide a causal explanation for each outcome. These explanations were then grouped according to whether the attributions represented stable or variable causes. Finally, key workers were asked to provide a new expectancy rating to forecast future goal attainment. Two predictions from Weiner's model were confirmed by statistical analysis: (1) that success attributed to stable factors would lead to higher revised forecasts of goal attainment than success attributed to variable factors; and (2) that failure attributed to stable factors would lead to lower revised forecasts of goal attainment than failure attributed to variable factors. The results of the present study confirm that stability attributions do alter key workers' revised forecasts of goal attainment. The results are discussed in terms of the possible consequences for key worker behaviour, such as goal abandonment, differential treatment of service users and the need for a knowledgeable approach to performance appraisal by managers.