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Evidence of overprescribing of psychotropic medicines to manage challenging behaviour in people with intellectual disabilities has led to national programmes within the UK to promote deprescribing, such as stopping the overprescribing of medication in people (with learning disabilities, autism or both). To successfully implement deprescribing initiatives, we need to understand how to engage stakeholders in the process.

In a published systematic review, we reported evidence about the process of deprescribing psychotropic medicines for people of all ages with intellectual disabilities and challenging behaviour. As a part of the original review, we searched for evidence about stakeholders’ experiences of the psychotropic deprescribing process, which was synthesised and reported within the current study.

Six studies were identified. Involving carers and people with intellectual disabilities, providing ongoing support and improving access to non-pharmacological interventions, including positive behaviour support, may contribute to successful outcomes, including reducing or stopping psychotropic medicines and improving quality of life. Implementing psychotropic deprescribing requires a multidisciplinary collaborative care approach and education for stakeholders.

There have been no previous reviews of stakeholder experiences of deprescribing psychotropic medications for people with intellectual disabilities and challenging behaviour. The existing literature is scant, and further research is needed.

With a historic lack of attention to synthesis methods such as systematic review and meta-analysis and a lack of randomised controlled trials, the evidence base for behavioural interventions for children and adults who are autistic or are diagnosed with developmental disabilities is patchy. The Sharland Foundation Developmental Disabilities Applied Behavioural Research and Impact Network (SF-DDARIN), a network of like-minded researchers and practitioners across the UK, aims to address this. The purpose of this paper is to describe the network’s work and provide the context for the remaining articles in the special issue that exemplify network projects.

In this case study paper, the authors describe how the SF-DDARIN works and is resourced, detailing the process used to maximise research opportunities by facilitating network members working together. The authors outline the progressive research steps that the SF-DDARIN has identified are needed to develop and improve the evidence base for behavioural interventions systematically and, with examples, describe how the network delivers these steps.

Since its establishment in 2016, the SF-DDARIN network members have collectively worked on more than 53 projects involving over 50 researchers, had over 120 special schools contribute to projects and have recruited over 500 participants. This has been achieved through funding from the Sharland Foundation, primarily to cover the staffing costs of a small support team and internship partnerships with external organisations. Some projects have attracted external funding.

SF-DDARIN may provide an innovative, effective and resource-efficient model for other groups seeking to develop and extend their evidence base in developmental disability research.

To date, little research has been undertaken to test the effectiveness of team coaching, with past work focusing on models, frameworks and competencies. This study aimed to examine the effectiveness of team coaching within real world organizational teams and its impact on individual perceptions of team cohesion and psychological safety.

A randomized control trial (RCT) using the comparable interventions: (1) team coaching (intervention) and (2) team facilitation (control) was employed with multiple teams and multiple facilitators, measuring the impact on team cohesion and psychological safety.

The data indicate participants engaging in the team coaching intervention made greater gains in terms of their individual perceptions of psychological safety and team cohesion than individuals who received the team facilitation intervention (T1–T2).

Facilitators should apply a team coaching approach when seeking to address issues of cohesion and psychological safety within workplace teams.

This study provides the first evidence, using an RCT method, of the effectiveness of team coaching as a workplace intervention for enhancing individual perceptions of psychological safety and team cohesion.

By integrating the conservation of resources and the emotion-as-social-information theories, this study aims to question whether the leader’s effort to calm down when team members perceive intra-team conflict (ITC) may have a counterproductive effect on their interpersonal functioning. Specifically, the authors investigated whether team members with higher individual perceptions of ITC would be more likely to experience interpersonal strain (ISW) when their team leaders downregulate or suppress their emotional responses (i.e. high interpersonal modulation of emotional responses [MER]). A further objective of the study was to examine whether this exacerbating effect would be conditional on the leader’s sex.

Data were collected from 236 white collars nested in 48 teams (Msize = 6.23; SDsize = 2.69) and their respective team leaders (56.7% men) of a large organization providing financial services.

Multilevel model results showed that team members confronted with higher ITC experienced higher ISW levels, especially when the leader’s interpersonal modulation of team members’ emotional responses was high (vs low). This effect was stronger when the interpersonal modulation was enacted by women (vs men) team leaders.

This study moves an important step forward in the conflict and ISW literature, as it is the first to identify a leader’s MER and sex as key boundary conditions under which ITC is related to team members’ ISW. The implications of these findings for theory and practice are discussed.

Sharing project information is critical for the success of medical crowdfunding campaigns. However, few users share medical crowdfunding projects on their social networks, and the sharing behavior of medical crowdfunding projects on social networking sites has not been well studied. Therefore, this study explored the factors and potential mechanisms influencing users’ sharing behaviors on networking sites.

A research model was developed based on the attribution-affect model of helping and social capital theory. Data were collected using a longitudinal survey. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to analyze the collected data. We conducted post hoc analyses to validate the results of the quantitative analysis.

The analysis results verified the effects of perceived external attribution, perceived uncontrollable attributions, and perceived unstable attributions on sympathy and identified the effect of sympathy and social characteristics of medical crowdfunding users on sharing behavior.

This research provides a comprehensive theoretical understanding of users’ sharing behavior characteristics and provides implications for enhancing the efficiency of medical crowdfunding activities.

This study attempts to answer the question: “how are the two drivers, accountability focus and organizational learning, independently and interactively associated with public agencies’ proactive policy orientation?” The first driver is the multiple accountabilities that public agencies pursue: (1) bureaucratic, (2) legal, (3) professional and (4) political. The second driver is the organizational learning activities of public agencies: (1) socialization, (2) externalization, (3) combination and (4) internalization.

For data, 800 respondents from the public agencies in South Korea were surveyed.

The analysis provided several findings: (1) the discretionary accountabilities (professional and political) have a greater positive influence on the proactive policy orientation; (2) the conventional accountabilities (legal and bureaucratic) tend to have negative impacts on the proactive policy orientation and (3) among the four types of accountability, legal accountability can be more significantly complemented by organizational learning activities, which can enable both visionary and realistic administration in a balanced manner.

This study provides a unique insight on how organizational proactivity can be ensured through the interactions of organizational accountabilities and organizational learning.