Implementation of policy regarding restrictive practices in England

Concerns about the overuse, misuse and potential abuse of restrictive interventions used to manage people who may exhibit behaviour described as challenging led to revised guidance in England. The purpose of this paper is to examine the implementation of this guidance in organisations providing services for people with learning disabilities.

A survey collected data from professionals, on leadership, data use, staff issues and post-incident review.

Most senior leaders were seen as acting on the guidance. Data collected were regarded as generally accurate, but less than half of the managers were seen as likely to respond to consistently high or increasing use of restrictive practices. Frontline staff and managers were seen as very significant for reducing restrictive practices. Uncertainty was shown regarding the goals and activities needed to provide post-incident review.

This exploratory survey may be useful for organisations wanting to audit their implementation of government policy and/or for research on a wider scale to indicate how well societies are implementing policy to reduce restrictive practices. Further research on the survey’s validity and reliability is required.

Further action is needed to encourage all organisations to implement best practice and government policy. This survey showed that some organisations appear to be committed to and potentially achieving reductions in restrictive practices.

This paper describes the first survey designed to evaluate organisational efforts to implement an important policy initiative.