Evaluating a virtual community-of-practice as implementation strategy for the needs assessment framework in intellectual disability care: A quasi-experimental multi-methods study

Background: The Needs Assessment Framework (NAF) stimulates awareness of care staff to consider perspectives of clients with intellectual disabilities in decisions on involuntary care. We explored the effect of implementers' participation in a Virtual Community-of-Practice (VCoP) for designing implementation plans, on NAF implementation and staff awareness.

Method: A quasi-experimental design was used to compare implementation and awareness by care staff (n = 54) between organisations that implemented NAF with VCoP participation (N = 4) and organisations that implemented NAF as usual (N = 3). The ItFits toolkit work routine in the VCoP was qualitatively analysed to understand choices regarding implementation plans.

Results: No statistical differences in implementation and awareness among care staff were found between the intervention and control groups. Implementers evaluated collaboration on implementation and the ItFits toolkit as helpful.

Conclusions: Evaluation of implementation effectiveness and process are both needed to offer unique insights for iteratively changing daily practice around involuntary care.