Recently we hosted a conference around violence reduction strategies as part of our work with the Midlands Physical Intervention Network and invited service user Sue along to attend the event. She also provided us with her account of the day:
“My name is Sue, I suffer with Schizophrenia and have been a Service User for 36 years. Having been a revolving door patient in the past in a number of hospitals I had witnessed a few incidents of violence from patients on other patients and staff and I had also witnessed the interventions.
“Invariably one or two staff members would grab the violent individual and take them off to give them an injection in the rump and keep them out of circulation for a time. So, it was refreshing to see so many professionals talking about the reduction and de-escalation techniques for addressing violence in the work place.
“One of the speakers showed us a film by undercover reporters for the BBC TV programme Panorama showing learning disability youngsters being “restrained”. It provoked a widespread reaction that this was not restraint but criminal abuse. One man said in 25 years of Service he had never, and never would, use this type of restraint.
“In the afternoon I attended Giles Perry’s workshop on using clinical risk management to inform training needs. This looked at when violent incidents spiked the statistics and how the training team looks at the de-escalation techniques that could be used to hopefully bring things under control again by working with the Service User and Staff.
“However, it was down to the staff to report the incidents in the first place which lead to a discussion about what a definition of violence and aggression was, how can staff listen to Service Users and where do we report incidents so that they can be collated and analysed properly. So that if necessary a training officer can target specialist resources to certain hot spots or clusters to Service Areas to hopefully lessen the violent incidents and hopefully ensure that appropriate case reviews and undertaken.
“Later that day a speaker from Mind spoke about their campaign ‘Mental Health Crisis Care: Physical Restraint in Crisis’. As someone in the audience said Mind had really put the cat among the pigeons and opened up discussion on the use of face downwards restraint to be made illegal. I voiced my concerns that face down restraint should still be taught otherwise risky practices would creep in. I also wanted to make one other point but other people wanted to speak, my other pint being that if a patient with challenging behaviour was acting up, if he or she knew that face down restraint was illegal they could just drop to the ground knowing the staff couldn’t touch him in that position and could still spit and kick and hit someone and cause a nuisance and staff would be tied up for a long time with that situation. The staff have got to be free to do their job.
“At the end of the day a lot of people said it was alright having training but that good practice had to be embedded into work day situations and how can we be sure that we do that. I will close with that thought.”
“My name is Sue, I suffer with Schizophrenia and have been a Service User for 36 years. Having been a revolving door patient in the past in a number of hospitals I had witnessed a few incidents of violence from patients on other patients and staff and I had also witnessed the interventions.
“Invariably one or two staff members would grab the violent individual and take them off to give them an injection in the rump and keep them out of circulation for a time. So, it was refreshing to see so many professionals talking about the reduction and de-escalation techniques for addressing violence in the work place.
“One of the speakers showed us a film by undercover reporters for the BBC TV programme Panorama showing learning disability youngsters being “restrained”. It provoked a widespread reaction that this was not restraint but criminal abuse. One man said in 25 years of Service he had never, and never would, use this type of restraint.
“In the afternoon I attended Giles Perry’s workshop on using clinical risk management to inform training needs. This looked at when violent incidents spiked the statistics and how the training team looks at the de-escalation techniques that could be used to hopefully bring things under control again by working with the Service User and Staff.
“However, it was down to the staff to report the incidents in the first place which lead to a discussion about what a definition of violence and aggression was, how can staff listen to Service Users and where do we report incidents so that they can be collated and analysed properly. So that if necessary a training officer can target specialist resources to certain hot spots or clusters to Service Areas to hopefully lessen the violent incidents and hopefully ensure that appropriate case reviews and undertaken.
“Later that day a speaker from Mind spoke about their campaign ‘Mental Health Crisis Care: Physical Restraint in Crisis’. As someone in the audience said Mind had really put the cat among the pigeons and opened up discussion on the use of face downwards restraint to be made illegal. I voiced my concerns that face down restraint should still be taught otherwise risky practices would creep in. I also wanted to make one other point but other people wanted to speak, my other pint being that if a patient with challenging behaviour was acting up, if he or she knew that face down restraint was illegal they could just drop to the ground knowing the staff couldn’t touch him in that position and could still spit and kick and hit someone and cause a nuisance and staff would be tied up for a long time with that situation. The staff have got to be free to do their job.
“At the end of the day a lot of people said it was alright having training but that good practice had to be embedded into work day situations and how can we be sure that we do that. I will close with that thought.”