Characterisation of resident-to-resident aggression in residential services for people with disabilities

Purpose – Resident-to-resident aggression (RRA) is defined as “negative and aggressive physical, sexual or verbal interactions between long-term care residents that in a community setting would likely be construed as unwelcome and have high potential to cause physical or psychological distress in the recipient” (Rosen et al., 2008). Although a commonly occurring phenomena, there is limited research on RRA particularly in residential services for people with disabilities (RCF-D), knowledge which would inform targeted safeguarding action. This study aims to identify the major forms of RRA that are found in RCF-D. Design/methodology/approach – Analysis was performed on notifications of allegations of abuse submitted to the Regulator of social services in Ireland, from RCF-D. The authors extracted one year of notifications of abuse made by RCF-D (n = 696) from a large, national database of all notifications made in Ireland. The authors used a hybrid inductive-abductive approach and performed thematic content analysis using an existing framework by Pillemer et al. (2012), originally designed to characterise RRA in nursing homes. Findings – Analysis of the notification events identified 17 forms of RRA. The most prevalent forms of RRA were physical bodily aggression (31.6%), general verbal abuse (21.0%) and angry attempts at social control (10.9%). In total, 35.6% of events involved two or more forms of RRA. The findings were used to develop an adapted framework for categorising forms of RRA in RCF-D. Research limitations/implications – This study offers a novel insight into RRA events occurring in RCF-D, encompassing a wide range of behaviours, with physical bodily aggression being the most prevalent. Practical implications – The adapted framework will inform practice and training programmes; it will also support data collection and future research. Originality/value – This study found that RRA events in RCF-Ds in Ireland encompass a wide range of behaviours, the majority of which did not match any of the categories already defined in a framework for nursing homes. This study produced an adapted framework for RCF-Ds to categorise and measure the frequency of RRA. Use of this adapted framework will support practice development and research in this understudied area, and will inform safeguarding policy and practice within services.