Staff Attitudes Towards Young People Living in Looked After Accommodation

Jennifer Copley

EUSARF September 2014

Objectives

• Outline the aims of research project• Discuss the research findings• Consider practical application of the research

considerations

Copley, J., Johnson, D., and Bain, S. (in press). Staff attitudes towards young people in looked after accommodation. Journal of Forensic Practice

Introduction

• Education and residential, secure and foster placements for young people, male and female

• May experience a range of difficulties, including mental health difficulties, self-harming behaviours, or involvement in offending and substances misuse

• These characteristics can attractive negative attitudes from public

and staff members (Colton and Roberts, 2006)

Why consider staff attitudes?

• Important aspect of client facing roles

• May affect their working practice (Craig 2005; Lea et al,1999)

• Young people feel staff attitudes impact on their well-being (Stevens and Boyle, nd)

Factors impacting on attitudes• Burnout

- a framework for considering the development of negative attitudes towards clients

- notes the demands of client facing roles can leave staff feeling emotionally exhausted, which can lead to the development of cynicism and negative attitudes (Maslach and Jackson, 1981)

- some difficulties regarding measurement of burnout, but the model suggests a link between staff well-being and the development of negative attitudes

- Studies have considered the factors impacting on staff well-being; this has included age, gender, exposure to violence, and organisational factors

•This study focused on further individual characteristics that may impact on psychological well-being, and therefore attitudes, specifically empathy and coping style

• Empathy

- has been found to leave staff vulnerable to burn out (Regehr, et al, 2002)

- considered a necessary characteristic for working in client facing roles (Marshall, et al, 2005)

- emotional empathy: concerned with the feelings experienced towards another person and linked to increasing risk of damage to psychological well-being (Walker, 2011)

- cognitive empathy: ability to perspective take and consider views of others while remaining detached, which can protect against damage to psychological well-being (Gerdes and Segal, 2009)

•Coping Style

- how an individual copes with perceived threat (Roger at al, 1993)

- emotional coping: describes tendency to ruminate on emotionally upsetting events, which may increase risk of psychological distress or burnout (Roger and Jamieson, 1988)

- rational coping: defined by feeling independent of the problem and found to be positively correlated with psychological well-being (Ireland et al, 2005)

Research hypothesis

• Psychological well-being, empathy (emotional and detached) and coping style (affective and cognitive) would predict attitudes towards young people

• Low psychological well-being, emotional empathy and emotional coping would correlate negatively with attitudes

• Cognitive empathy and rational coping would correlate positively with attitudes

Current study • 83 Education and care staff

• Completed four questionnaires- Attitude to prisoner scale (adapted from Melvin et al, 1985)

- The General Health Questionnaire (Goldberg and Williams, 2006)

- Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis, 1980)

- Coping Styles Questionnaire (Roger, et al, 1993)

• Used multiple regression to consider the power of each variable in predicting attitudes

Research Findings

• Only factor predictive of staff attitudes was emotional empathy• And in opposite direction to predicted

As emotional empathy went up, positive attitudes went up

What does this mean

• Original model proposed is unsupported (possibly not relevant to this population)

• Emotional empathy may protect against development of negative attitudes

• Importance of fostering staff empathy

Practical applications

•Consider empathy training- empathy training has been demonstrated to increase patient care with junior doctors (Riess et al.,

2012) and a similar recommendation has been made for prison staff (Ireland and Quinn, 2007) •Consider empathy within supervision

- open discussion about feelings towards young people- understand the impact this work can have on attitudes• Consider empathy during recruitment - use of psychometric measures?

Limitations

• Only 34% of population responded, why they may have responded• Cross-sectional study, using self-report at one establishment, limits

in determining causal direction• Socially desirable responding (may reflect self awareness of

empathic feelings and desire not to present negative attitudes)• Use of psychometrics to measure empathy: there is a range of tools,

possibly consider other methods

Thank you for your attention

Jen.Copley@kibble.org

References

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