Elien Neimeijer

95 ale is that challenging behaviour of clients does not occur in isolation but in a social context affected by behaviour of staff (i.e., transactional processes). And staff members do not work in a vacuum either (Hastings et al., 2013). In addition, scientific research is also increasingly paying attention to the work climate in relation to the quality of residential care (see e.g., Lambert, Altheimer, Hogan, & Barton-Bellessa, 2011; Lambert, Barton-Bellessa, & Hogan, 2015; De Valk, 2019; Knotter, 2019; Olivier-Pijpers, 2020; Van Gink et al., 2018). However, studies on which aspects of work climate relate to group climate as perceived by clients with MID-BIF have not yet been conducted. The current study The purpose of the study is to examine associations between group climate as perceived by individuals with MID-BIF in a secure forensic setting and work climate as experienced by sociotherapists. This study provides knowledge by being the first study to examine the association between work climate and group climate in a secure forensic treatment set- ting. Structural equation modelling and multilevel analyses will be employed to analyse these relations. Analysing these relations is important as, from a social systems perspec- tive, a living group is considered a unique social network where clients influence each other’s attitudes and behaviours. When clients are staying at the same living group, they share experiences and influence each other, which should be acknowledged in the analy- ses. Besides group level characteristics, the quality of group climate is affected by clients’ (individual) characteristics. Therefore, the present study distinguishes between charac- teristics of living groups and characteristics of individual clients within living groups. It is hypothesised that if sociotherapists report low workload, a positive work environ- ment, high job satisfaction, a shared vision, and transformational or transactional lead- ership, they experience a more positive team functioning, resulting in a therapeutic (i.e., positive) group climate in terms of more support, a more positive atmosphere and more possibilities for growth as perceived by clients. On the other hand, it is expected that high perceived workload, a negative work environment, a low job satisfaction, no shared vision, and laissez-faire leadership is related to negative team functioning, which is asso- ciated with a more repressive (i.e., negative) group climate.