Graham Firth and colleagues discuss how residential and day service staff can change the way they communicate with people who have severe or profound learning disabilities

Intensive interaction is a way of improving communication with children and adults who have severe or profound learning disabilities and/or autism. Research shows intensive interaction interventions often lead to more or new responses. This article discusses the Leeds NHS intensive interaction programme, which was developed to help staff implement the approach with individual service users. It also describes an evaluation of the programme during which feedback was generally positive and respondents said they would recommend the programme to other services.