Attitudes to community care: Development of a questionnaire for professionals

Abstract

Attitudes are usually seen as playing a crucial role in shaping how we deal with situations. At the present time a major challenge concerns the reprovision of mental health services, in keeping with the policy of community care. While the attitudes of clients and the general public have frequently been assessed, little attention has been accorded to the attitudes staff hold towards community care. These attitudes are presumed to mediate how staff implement the policy. This inattention is redressed in the present article through the development of an 'attitudes to community care' questionnaire (ACCQ) administered to 149 mental health professionals. Our results indicate that the ACCQ is a reliable and valid measure of five factors, which service to operationalise 'community care'. The ACCQ should next be applied on an experimental basis in relation to such tasks as staff selection and retraining.