Working with children and young
people
INTRODUCTION
At Studio III we’re always seeking new and
innovative ways to bring you the latest information about working with
children who challenge. Welcome
to the part of our website that describes the work we undertake with
these children and young people. We
hope you will find the information you are looking for and that this
information will help you work with children with challenging behaviours.
Your interest is appreciated.
A
WORD OF CAUTION
Before you read on, a word of caution.
If you are looking for purely physical skills based training
then we are the wrong training agency for you.
We do teach breakaway skills, physical interventions and physical
restraint, and we are told that we are very good at it. But with us
the emphasis is on doing much more to prevent difficult situations becoming
physically challenging in the first place. And that is the way we want it to be. The needs, safety and welfare of the child
are always of paramount importance to us, factors that many of our competitors
seem to forget in their hurry to teach physical tricks to manage difficult
situations. Most difficult situations
do not require physical management,
infact most of the time, attempting to physically manage a situation
just make the situation worse for the child and for you.
At Studio III we use a systemic approach
to challenging behaviours. The
technical term is non-aversive, early intervention. The approach is clinically proven and is used in many Children’s
Services and Schools throughout the UK and Ireland. The approach does not guarantee success in preventing an escalation
to physically challenging behaviours but what approach can? Any training agency claiming that they can
guarantee 100% success at either preventing situations becoming physically
challenging or that a physical restraint will always work are simply
misleading you. We can however
offer you a range of strategies that will make you feel better about
the child and the child feel better about you and can decrease the likelihood
of injury to you, the child or other children.
It is our belief that the vast majority of physically violent incidents could
have been avoided in the first place if the right early intervention
strategies were in place. Unfortunately
we often work with staff teams who despite having been “trained” in
defusion and de-escalation techniques still use physical interventions
and even physical restraint as anything but a last resort.
We occasionally still work with staff teams especially those
in Pupil Referral Units and Secure Children’s Homes who routinely and
cynically use physical restraint not because they need to but because
they can. Sometimes this is because staff like to exert
power over vulnerable young people, we call this child abuse, but more
often it is because of the way in which they have been trained.
GOVERNMENT
APPROVED TRAINING SCHEMES
There is no “officially” recognised training
package for staff working with children with challenging behaviour.
There is certainly no government sanctioned methods of physically restraining
children. Anyone who tells you otherwise is simply misleading you. The
Department for Education and Employment and the Department of Health
periodically produce guidelines to assist staff and services working
with childen who challenge. The most recent has been through the British
Institute for Learning Disabilities, and we are pleased to have been
involved in the publication of their most recent guidelines on the use
of physical restraint as part of the BILD steering group.
However even these guidelines have been unable to “outlaw” certain
physical procedures such as rolling children in quilts, face down floor
restraints, basket holds, arm locks and wrist locks, even though they
are universally recognised as being very dangerous.
But enough of the bad news, please enter
our site and we hope you find what you are looking for. If you have any queries please do not hesitate
to e.mail us or contact us by phone.
David Walker. BSc, DipCYW
Director of Children Services - Studio III
Training Systems.
