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CEDAR

Completed 2019

Evaluating the effectiveness of Active Support: establishing the platform

Dr Vasiliki Totsika
Funder: NIHR School for Social Care Research, 2016-2017

Active Support is person-focussed model of care for organising life in residential settings of adults with learning disabilities. Active Support aims to increase the engagement of people in meaningful, age-appropriate activities of daily life with appropriate support from staff (Jones et al., 1999; Stancliffe et al., 2008; Totsika et al., 2008).


The current project involves two parallel strands of work:

(a) A systematic review of all evaluations of Active Support is currently underway. The review has been
registered with PROSPERO (CRD42016051193). The review has been published in the Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jar.12491?af=R&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+learningDisabilitiesViaSSSFTLibrary+%28Learning+Disabilities+Update%29

Flynn, S., Totsika, V., Hastings, R.P., Hood, K., Toogood, S., & Felce, D. (2018). Effectiveness of Active Support for adults with intellectual disability in residential settings: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities. Early View. doi: 10.1111/jar.12491.

(b) Development of a protocol for a future randomised controlled trial, as a first step towards a more
rigorous evaluation of Active’s Support efficacy. A protocol is currently being developed.