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We’ve finished our training, so what’s next? There’s no doubt that Team Teach training can be transformative, helping us to develop and nurture a positive behaviour culture across our entire organisation.
After training, when we return to our workplace, brimming with inspiration and empowered with fresh insights and perspectives, we can be keen to implement new learning and ideas immediately. The challenge for all of us is: how do we embed the core principles of Team Teach training into every facet of our professional practice in a strategic, sustainable and meaningful way?
All Team Teach training encompasses a number of core principles:
Team Teach promotes a values-driven, person-centred and holistic approach to behaviour. At the heart of this approach lies the principle that our decision-making should always be driven by the best interests of those we support. This core belief should underpin all individual support plans and behaviour policies and practices, to ensure that our focus is always trained on what is best for the people in our settings.
The Team Teach ethos is rooted in the belief that all behaviour is communication and is driven by our experiences, thoughts and feelings. It is our responsibility as professionals to unpick and understand the function of behaviour, in order to identify the underlying causes and develop the most suitable support strategies.
Relationships are central to effective behaviour support, so we must work to understand the unique needs of the children, young people and adults we are supporting. By investing time to build positive relationships through meaningful connections and a willingness to listen and learn, we can capitalise on mutual trust and respect at all times, but especially during moments of crisis or dysregulation.
Meaningful plans and policies are working documents that reflect an individual’s needs. Through a process of continual reflection and evaluation, their purpose is to inform our practice so that we can always offer the best supports.
Where possible, we should be taking steps to avoid escalation and crisis, and instead employ proactive, positive de-escalation strategies at the earliest opportunity.
De-escalation and risk reduction are of paramount importance, and the use of any restrictive practice should always be a last resort. Any physical intervention should be considered reasonable, proportionate and necessary, and involve minimal force for the shortest amount of time.
After attending training, we need to decide how best to translate these Team Teach principles into actionable steps and embed new thinking and approaches into our everyday practice.
We are all at different stages in our understanding of and approach to behaviour support, so there is no single recommended way to do this. We also need to remember that, while there are some aspects of behaviour support that we can implement immediately, true transformation is a process which takes time, patience and commitment, so it’s important to be realistic and manage our expectations.
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