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Communicate better with people who challenge you most

 

Andrew McDonnell,

Director,

Studio3 Training Systems,

www.studio3.org

 

November 2003-11-10

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

·      Challenging behaviours challenge ‘systems’ of care.

 

 

 

 

·      Behaviours which often seem inexplicable can often be explained if service providers attempt to take the perspective of the service user.

 

 

 

 

·      Would we happily and freely place control of our lives into the hands of a stranger?

 

 

 

 

·      This presentation will focus on a simplistic premise. ‘To understand the challenging behaviour of service users we must first attempt to understand our own behaviour first?

 

 

Staff behaviour

 

·      Behavioural approaches often focus on the behaviour of the service user and the social context where the behaviour occurs.

 

 

·      The behaviour of staff is acknowledged to be an important aspect of challenging behaviour (Hastings & Remington, 1994; McDonnell, 2003). Staff/carers inadvertently reinforce behaviours.

 

 

·      Interventions which alter staff behaviour can have powerful effects on the behaviour of service users.

 

 

·      How many people have ever noticed that more incidents of challenges occur when a particular person is on duty?

 

 

·      I should stress that this is not a BLAME model.

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusions

 

·      We need to attempt to understand behaviour from the clients perspective.

 

 

 

·      We need to understand that people in services are fallible and will sometimes get things wrong.

 

 

 

·      Reflective practice is not just OK for frontline staff, but, also managers etc.

 

 

 

·      Listening to people will often mean the restructuring and design of services.

 

 

 

·      Ask yourself the question what makes me angry? Are you any different from other consumers of your service?