Improving Social Climate in Secure Settings With a Compassion Focused Staff Intervention

University Psychiatric Clinics Basel

Status: Active, not recruiting

Conditions: Workplace Wellbeing; Compassion; Critical Incident; Social Climate; Staff Support

Treatments: Behavioral: Compassion Focused Staff Support; Behavioral: CFT Workshop

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: NETWORK

Identifiers

NCT07135518

ID ClimACT CFSS

Details and patient eligibility

About

This study evaluates the effectiveness of a Compassion Focused Staff Support (CFSS) intervention in improving the social climate of correctional and forensic psychiatric institutions. The intervention is based on Compassion Focused Therapy and designed to support staff in managing stress, enhancing affect regulation, and strengthening compassion toward self and others. Three institutional units are included in the study. One unit is randomly selected to receive the full CFSS intervention, including a half-day introductory workshop and monthly staff support sessions over six months. A second unit serves as a control group and receives no intervention. A third unit receives only the initial workshop without follow-up sessions. The effect of the intervention is evaluated using a pre-test/post-test design. Outcomes include changes in staff-reported and client-reported social climate, assessed with validated questionnaires, as well as institutional data on critical incidents. The study aims to improve working conditions in secure settings and foster more compassionate, effective staff-client interactions.

Enrollment: 52 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

Staff Participants:

• Employed at one of the participating correctional or forensic psychiatric units
• Aged 18 years or older
• Willing to provide informed consent

Client Participants:

• Residing in one of the participating correctional or forensic psychiatric units at the time of data collection.
• Aged 18 years or older.
• Capable of providing informed consent

Exclusion criteria

Staff Participants:

• None (all eligible staff are invited to participate)

Client Participants:

• Not capable of providing informed consent (e.g., due to acute psychiatric crisis or cognitive impairment).
• Not deemed competent to participate by treatment team.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Supportive Care

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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52 participants in 3 patient groups

Intervention

Experimental group

Description:

Full CFSS Group (Workshop + Monthly Groups)

Treatment:

Behavioral: Compassion Focused Staff Support

Partial

Other group

Description:

Workshop-Only Group

Treatment:

Behavioral: CFT Workshop

Control

No Intervention group

Description:

No intervention