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 wellbeing (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
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