Predicting good Active Support for people with intellectual disabilities in supported accommodation services: Key messages for providers, consumers and regulators

Figures & data

Table 1. Organisational management features.

Organisational management feature	Description
Shared prioritization of practice and active support	Senior leaders share a commitment to practice and active support, recognise significance of conceptual clarity about practice, demonstrate investment of resources to leadership of practice across services, symbolic use of language of practice and continuous reflection on progress.
Strongly supporting practice leadership	Senior leaders are concerned with strengthening and adjusting delivery of frontline practice leadership through structure, support and development to staff, and redistribution of tasks and resources.
Closeness of practice leadership to every-day service delivery	Frontline practice leadership functions reside with staff who are close to the everyday management and running of the service. They work alongside staff and have both formal and incidental opportunities for observation, modelling and coaching.
Concentration of practice leadership tasks	Frontline practice leadership functions are concentrated in one position rather than dispersed across positions.

Table 2. Key characteristics of the 14 participating organisations

Organisation	Total number of services managed	Total number of service users	Number of years implementing active support	Annual turnover split into 2 groups
1	5	21	8	<50 million
2	15	28	14	>$50 million
3	5	18	13	>$50 million
4	34	155	12	>$50 million
5	25	100	6	<$50 million
6	7	29	5	>$50 million
7	10	62	5.5	<$50 million
8	33	138	11	<$50 million
9	27	140	2	>$50 million
10	38	131	9	>$50 million
11	23	66	2	<$50 million
12	7	42	1	<$50 million
13	16	78	1	<$50 million
14	31	142	1	>$50 million

Table 3. Number of services, consenting service users (SUs), staff surveys and practice leadership interviews from each organisation included in the analysis.

Organisation	Total number of services	Total number of service users	Total number of staff	Total number of practice leaders
1	5	13	18	4
2	6	12	20	6
3	5	14	17	4
4	4	17	13	4
5	5	16	15	5
6	7	25	25	7
7	7	35	25	7
8	6	21	36	6
9	5	19	18	5
10	3	13	11	3
11	5	11	15	5
12	5	28	20	5
13	4	17	12	4
14	4	12	18	4

Table 4. Comparison of the characteristics of the selected and non-selected service user samples.

		ALL (n = 1112)	2017–2018 sample (n = 253)	Non-selected sample (n = 859)	p
Age (years)	M	47	47	48	p = .188
	Range	20–84	21–81	20–84
Percentage male		52% (n = 578)	54% (n = 137)	52% (n = 441)	p = .483
Part I ABS score	M	150	147	151	p = .481
	Range	22–291	22–272	22–291
Total score on the ABC	M	28	25	29	p = .08
	Range	0–144	0–97	0–144
Percentage socially impaired		60% (n = 626)	61% (n = 144)	60% (n = 482)	p = .961
Percentage with autism spectrum disorder		17% (n = 187)	17% (n = 44)	17% (n = 143)	p = .804
Percentage with a physical impairment		35% (n = 392)	36% (n = 91)	35% (n = 301)	p = .823

Table 5. Organisational management features across the 14 organisations (adapted from Bigby et al., 2019b).

Organisation	Services (SUs) receiving good active support^1	Shared prioritisation of practice and active support	Strongly supporting practice leadership	Practice leadership close to everyday service delivery	Concentration of practice leadership and line management tasks
1	100% (92%)	1	1	1	1
2	71% (62%)	1	1	1	1
3	100% (93%)	1	1	1	1
4	33% (35%)	0	0	0	0
5	40% (41%)	0	0	0	1
6	57% (48%)	0	1	1	0
7	71% (71%)	1	1	1	1
8	86% (88%)	1	1	1	1
9	50% (55%)	1	0	0	0
10	33% (31%)	0	0	1	1
11	29% (21%)	1	0	1	1
12	57% (42%)	0	0	1	1
13	83% (70%)	1	1	1	1
14	50% (62%)	1	0	0	0

Note: ¹Organisations with 71% or more services with the majority of service users (>61%) shared four these organisational management features.

Table 6. Spearman correlations between predictor variables.

	ABS	Mean Practice Leadership	Service size – total number of SUs	Staff perception of quality of management	Organisation score on management features present
ASM	.432^b	.295^b	−.255^b	0.061	.381^b
ABS		−0.117	.250^b	.170^b	.180^b
Mean Practice Leadership			−0.051	−0.080	.322^b
Service size – Total number of SUs				.147^a	.130^a
Staff perception of quality of management					0.009

Notes: ^aCorrelation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

^bCorrelation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

Table 7. Parameter (beta) estimates of the multi-level models and deviance information criterion (MCMC).

	Model 1 (S.E)	Model 2 (S.E)	Model 3 (S.E)	Model 4 (S.E)
Fixed parameters
Constant	67.488 (2.496)	67.458 (2.157)	69.948 (1.765)	69.436 (1.511)
Individual predictors
ABS		0.134 (0.017)	0.154 (0.017)	0.146 (0.017)
Service level predictors
Mean practice leadership score			7.820 (1.846)	6.793 (1.714)
7 or more SUs in the service (6 or less base)			−28.673 (7.112)	−29.586 (6.587)
Staff perception of quality of management			0.274 (0.139)	0.267 (0.128)
Organisation level predictors
Organisation score of management features present				3.51 (1.132)
Random parameters
Level 3: Between organisations	34.253 (47.568)	22.529 (33.275)	13.406 (20.741)	3.676 (9.243)
Level 2: Between services	273.191 (54.823)	229.443 (44.678)	106.102 (28.444)	98.841 (24.298)
Level 1: Within individuals	144.704 (13.905)	120.094 (11.526)	117.663 (12.375)	116.949 (12.349)
Deviance Information Criterion (DIC)	2471.614	2407.568	1999.577	1975.018
Change in DIC		64.046	407.991	24.559

Note: All estimates are significant at 0.05 probability level or smaller.

Figure 1. Predictors of good active support.

Bigby, C., Bould, E., Iacono, T., & Beadle-Brown, J. (2019b). What matters at the organisational level for the quality of practice in supported accommodation services for people with intellectual disabilities. Journal of Intellectual and Developmental Disability. doi: 10.3109/13668250.2019.1671965

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