Developmental support agencies support many adults with intellectual disabilities in the community. Unfortunately, these adults often exhibit high rates of challenging behaviour, which present significant pressures on these service providers. Agencies need to develop effective means of increasing their capacity to provide quality support. Previous…

Employment specialists play an integral role in supporting individuals with disabilities to access competitive integrated employment; their skill or lack thereof has the potential to influence employment outcomes. A scoping review was conducted to identify the status of the empirical literature on employment specialist competencies and training to…

Background: Direct Support Professionals (DSP) work closely with individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) and can play an important role in helping these individuals get treatment when they are also experiencing mental health concerns (MHC). Methods: We employed a systematic review search techniques to identify 15…

While abduction remains a rare occurrence in the United States, many parents and caregivers have concerns about children's reactions to strangers and other safety-related behaviors. Abduction is a risk for all children, but may be of specific concern for people with disabilities due to social skill and communication deficits. Behavior analytic…

Functional communication training (FCT) is highly effective in reducing challenging behavior and increasing appropriate communication in children with developmental disabilities. However, the challenging behavior may re-occur following successful treatment with functional communication training when the functional communication response contacts…

Although the impact of peer-mediated interventions on students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) has been studied extensively, little attention has focused on the peers without disabilities who are so central to these interventions. We reviewed 98 studies to examine the portrait of more than 3,000 peers without disabilities…

Frontline staff are a valuable asset within an intellectual and developmental disability service. Their work dictates the overall standard of care delivered by the organization. However, there is evidence that the research relating to effective practice is having little impact on the competencies displayed by staff in the real-world setting.…

Formal preference assessments are commonly implemented as a way to evaluate potential reinforcers for individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, developmental disabilities, and intellectual disabilities. Today there are numerous formal preference assessments that can be used clinically, and which have been evaluated empirically.…

This paper reports a meta-analysis to evaluate procedures to train change agents in discrete trial teaching, preference assessment, and mand training. Behavioral skills training packages were the most commonly used and were consistently and highly effective in changing change agent behavior. Procedural variation in training overlapped in…

Individuals with developmental disabilities (DD) depend on caregivers to meet physical, emotional, and social needs. This makes relationships with caregivers particularly important to quality of life. Without intervention, social interactions may be limited and ineffective, affecting relationships with caregivers and thus quality of life for…

Technology is a possible solution to increase the accessibility of disability training and support for service providers in rural and remote areas. We conducted a systematic review across five databases using terms related to technology, training and support, and autism and developmental disability. The search identified 1626 articles and ten…

The profound injuries caused by child maltreatment are well documented in the neurological, attachment, cognitive, and developmental literature. In this review paper, we explore the potential of early childhood education (ECE) as a community-based resilience intervention for mitigating the impacts of child abuse and neglect and supporting families…

This article summarizes 43 empirical studies of school-to-community transition of hearing-impaired persons with developmental disabilities; discusses data collection and interpretation issues; and recommends future research, development, and evaluation. The studies deal with such areas as career/vocational preparation, independent living skills,…