Creating Healthy Homes: Modular Training Program to Address Burnout in Direct Care Staff in Adult Residential Settings

Best practices in providing supportive care for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities is ongoing focus of many residential facilities. The focus has been to create residential programs that provide environments for daily living that increase access to community integration. Direct care staff in these programs carry the responsibilities in implementing supports that both teach and maintain the skills necessary for the residents to have the best quality of life in community setting. The burnout symptoms experienced amongst professionals in this capacity has an impact in the provision of support. This project proposes a modular training protocol to assist direct staff in addressing the symptoms of burnout. The manual consists of six modules that provide information on understanding burnout, strategies to prevent burnout, and coping styles to manage stress. Modules are designed in a fashion to be used as standalone trainings or a complete series. A panel of experts were provided a copy of manual to review and provide feedback. The manual was updated based on the feedback received from expert reviewers. Future studies are needed to evaluate the effectiveness of the trainings to reduce burnout.