Building capable environments using practice leadership

The purpose of this paper is to outline the development and piloting of a training intervention for social care staff that uses a capable environments framework to improve the quality of staff support.

A single case study was used to evaluate changes in the quality of staff support and in levels of engagement and challenging behaviour for one of the individuals supported.

The case study demonstrates the usefulness of the capable environments framework as a model for training and development of support planning. Staff provided more positive interaction and support to the individual, who displayed increased participation in activities and reductions in the occurrence and episodic severity of challenging behaviour.

Capable environments is a systematic, theoretically-driven approach, which is focussed on the quality of support design and provision for people with intellectual disability. The use of such a framework as an intervention assists staff in the provision of effective personalised supports, a foundation for positive behaviour support.