Proposed Topic (Most preferred): :
Clinical Safety and Quality Service III (Projects aiming at quality service to patients and their carers)
Proposed Topic (Second preferred): :
Clinical Safety and Quality Service II (Projects aiming to enhance clinical safety and outcomes, clinical governance / risk management)
Authors (including presenting author) :
So SH(1), Ng HCC(1), Chan YH(1), Chan YL(1)
Affiliation :
(1)Occupational Therapy Department, Kowloon Hospital
Introduction :
Halfway house (HWH) is a common discharge destination for psychiatric in-patients where there is a certain level of requirements on the residents’ life skills. However, psychiatric in-patients often encounter difficulties in coping with the challenges in HWH due to life skills deficits, leading to failure in trial stay and re-admission to hospital. The Occupational Therapy (OT) Department of Kowloon Hospital thus developed a "Life Skills Enhancement Program" aiming to improve the life skills of psychiatric in-patients for better adjustment to HWH.
Objectives :
To evaluate the effectiveness of the program in enhancing the clients’ life skills and success rate of passing the trial stay in HWH
Methodology :
A simple experimental design with pre-test and post-test was adopted. Subjects were in-patients awaiting HWH in psychiatric rehabilitation ward. St. Louis Inventory of Community Living Skills - Chinese Version (SLICLS-C) and Social and Occupational Functioning Assessment Scale (SOFAS) were adopted as pre-test and post-test measures. The clients’ success rate of passing the trial stay in HWH were also evaluated. The program consisted of 4 themes: community living skills, household management skills, pre-vocational preparation and leisure development. There were totally 30 sessions. Each session lasted for 45 minutes, and consisted of classroom-based learning and skills practice.
Result & Outcome :
From August to December 2023, a total of 13 clients attended this program. There was statistically significant increase in the scores of both SLICLS-C (Wilcoxon signed-rank test, p=0.001) and SOFAS (Wilcoxon signed-rank test, p=0.001), indicating significant improvement of the clients’ life skills and functioning after attending the program. According to SLICIS-C, all of the clients’ functional level have improved from “dependent” to “semi-independent” where HWH was deemed suitable. 2-month post discharge follow-up indicated that all clients had successfully passed the trial stay in HWH after discharge without re-admission to hospital. These pilot results indicated positive effect in enhancing clients’ life skills and community reintegration to HWH. More samples will be collected in the future to further enhance the evidence of the program’s effectiveness, and this program can potentially be a part of the OT clinical protocol in mental health to prepare clients for sustaining their living in community.
