completed at the individual interviews with the sample of residents. See Table 3.2 for sections within the questionnaire and Appendix 2 for specific items within the sections. This questionnaire gathered information on
demographic information, activities of the residents and if they had experienced harassment in the community. It also contained five questionnaires, detailed below.
Satisfaction with treatment and care – this questionnaire was based on a section of the Core Assessment and Outcomes Packages for Mental Health Services (FACE Recording & Management Systems, 2000), which is widely used as an
A SURVEY AND EVALUATION OF COMMUNITY RESIDENTIAL MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES IN IRELAND 45
Facility questionnaire Resident questionnaire Key worker questionnaire Staff for resident questionnaire
Building Demographic Psychiatric Aims / functions
features information history of residence
Access to services Activities Global Assessment of Functioning
Rules / Regulations Harassment Factors that impede
independent living Food preparation Satisfaction of Physical Health
treatment / care Index
Wardrobe Health of the Factors that
Nation Outcome Scale promote
independent living
Staff Quality of Life
Admission procedures Disability Disability Assessment Scale Assessment Scale
Meetings Social Support
Evaluation processes BPRS
Files/regulations Perception of life in residence Resident characteristic
Activities
Community integration
evaluation tool in the UK and NI and has recently been used by some services in Ireland (e.g. HSE Mid Western Area, HSE Northern Area). Only Your Treatment and Care questionnaire was used in the current study to assess the service users’ experience of treatment and care. It contains a total of 22 items assessing the service users’ knowledge of care plans and relationships with key workers and psychiatrists. Service users indicate their response to the statements by ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘not sure’. Two general questions, using a four point scale,
enquiring about the overall satisfaction of the residents with treatment and care and the information they received was assessed at the end of the questionnaire.
Quality of life - the quality of life measure used was loosely based on the Satisfaction for Life Domains Scale (Tempier et al., 1997) measuring satisfaction with life in general and in 17 life domains (see Appendix 2). Residents indicated their
satisfaction on a three-point scale from 0 – 2, with higher scores indicating greater satisfaction. The scores on the 18 items were summed to give a total quality of life score.
Disability Assessment Scale (WHO DAS II) – this scale measured functioning and disability in the last thirty days. It assessed functioning and disability in six domains including understanding and communication, getting around, self-care, getting along with others, household and work activities and participation in society. Both residents and the residents’ key worker completed a version of this scale, resulting in two measures for each resident. The scale contains 12 items and is rated on a five-point scale from 0 – 4.
Social support – the scale used to measure social support was similar to the Mannheim Interview on Social Support (Veiel, 1990) in that it asked about social support in four domains including everyday psychological support, everyday instrumental support,
instrumental crisis support and psychological crisis support (see Section 6.1.1 for more details). Residents were asked to indicate who they asked for help during these times.
Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) – this is a widely used measure within psychiatry and was employed to measure the resident’s current
psychopathology. The 24 symptoms were rated by the researcher on a seven-point scale (i.e. 1 = not present to 7 = extremely severe).
Perception of life in the residence – this scale was devised by the authors to measure the residents’ perceptions of live in the
residence. Residents rated their perceptions on 12 areas including living in the house, how well residents got on together and with staff, how much control they had to lead their live as they wanted and how happy they were with their level of independence. At the end of the resident
questionnaire, residents were asked an open-ended question regarding their life in the
residence and what it was like to live there (see Section 8.5). 3.4.3Key worker questionnaire for
resident
The key worker questionnaire was employed to gather further information about the resident. It included psychiatric history, system of support, appropriateness of placement, general functioning, physical health, psychopathology
and disabilities. See Appendix 3 for specific items on the questionnaire. Below is a short description of the standardised measures used.
Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF American Psychiatric
Association, 1994) – provides the clinician’s judgement of the individual’s overall level of functioning. The GAF scale is rated with respect to
psychological, social and occupational functioning only and does not include impairment due to health or environmental limitations. The key worker rated the resident on a scale from one to 100.
Physical Health Index– this is a simple measure for assessing physical health and has been used by the UK study (O’Driscoll and Leff, 1993) and the Italian study (di Girolamo et al., 2005). This measured physical health problems on a scale of 0 – 3 with higher scores indicating greater disability. It is also used to rate the level of assistance required for disabilities on a scale of 0 – 7, again with higher scores
indicating greater assistance required. Health in eight domains is assessed.
Health of the Nation Outcome Scale (HoNOS) – this scale was designed to assess
psychopathology and disability in the previous two-weeks and has previously been used in the Italian study (di Girolamo and Bassi, 2004). The scale measured clinical and social functioning in 11 domains using a five-point scale from 0 (no problems) to 4 (severe problems).
Disability Assessment Scale (WHO DAS II) – key workers rated the residents on the DAS, as described above.
3.4.4Staff questionnaire