| Abstract: | This paper summarizes the results from a pilot study, designed to test a method of measuring the quality of care provided in two residential units for severely mentally handicapped children. The overall aim has been to devise general measures of the learning conditions (the quality of care) within residential units, which relate to groups of clients, and which are equally applicable at different times of the waking day. Such measures will only constitute a helpful monitoring instrument if they are shown to be reliable; to have, at least, face-validity: to be based upon representative and accurate data; and if they differentiate between settings which, intuitively, appear to differ in the extent to which the clients' appropriate behaviour is prompted and reinforced. |
