Teaching Early Reading Skills to Adults With Intellectual Disabilities Using a Support Worker/Family Carer Mediated Online Reading Programme: A Feasibility Randomised Controlled Trial.
Louise D Denne, Gwenllian Moody, Elinor Coulman and 7 others
PMID 39663663WHAT IT FOUND
Support workers and family carers could not deliver an online reading programme with enough consistency for a large trial.
Recruitment and retention were good, but staffing shortages and scheduling conflicts prevented participants from completing the required weekly sessions.
Key findings
01The feasibility trial failed to meet progression criteria for intervention implementation, with zero participants achieving the required adherence and fidelity levels.
02Staffing instability was a primary barrier, with 27% of original support workers leaving their jobs during the study and 73% citing staff shortages as a reason for inconsistent delivery.
03Recruitment and retention were successful, with 86% of participants retained at follow-up, suggesting that randomised trials in social care settings are feasible if the intervention itself is deliverable.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
This was a feasibility study, not an effectiveness trial, so it was not powered to detect clinical improvements in reading. The study took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, which exacerbated staffing shortages and disrupted usual care routines. Adherence was measured by logging into the online programme; offline activities suggested in the support manual were not recorded, so actual engagement may be underestimated. The sample was small (36 participants) and recruited from a single site, limiting generalisability.
Declared interests
The study was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) under its Research for Patient Benefit Social Care funding. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that the reading programme itself is ineffective for adults with intellectual disabilities. The trial failed to test the intervention's impact because the delivery model was not feasible in the real-world care setting, not because the participants could not learn to read.