An individual can experience a wide range of emotions after an incident including embarrassment, anger, pain, guilt and sorrow. It is important that they have the opportunity to discuss these feelings to help them move on from what happened. By discussing these feelings, an individual will be able to apologise to anyone they have hurt, have changes made to their support plans to prevent repeat occurrences and learn lessons from the experience.
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Describe how an individual can be supported to reflect on an incident including the consequence of their behaviour
The individual should also be encouraged to discuss the consequences of their behaviour. these could be positive (e.g. they got they what they wanted) and/or negative (e.g. they damaged one of their possessions) and they will often be linked with negative feelings (which are discussed in the next question).
In many cases, the consequences of the individual’s behaviour will be negative – they may have hurt themselves or broke something that they cherish or hurt somebody or been arrested. By being open and non-judgmental with the individual, you can help them to understand that are no better off because of their actions and are most probably worse off because of them, which can help make it less likely of a future incident occurring.
Describe how an individual can be supported to reflect on an incident including their behaviour
It is also important to discuss the incident itself so that the individual can develop responsibility for their actions and work on trying to stop it happening again in the future. Again, it is useful to not attribute blame on the individual and be sympathetic towards them as they may be suffering with complex feelings of guilt or embarrassment. Asking the individual what they hoped to achieve by their actions can be useful and it may be necessary to discuss with the individual what interventions they would like staff to use if this behaviour re-occurs.
Describe how an individual can be supported to reflect on an incident including how they were feeling at the time prior to and directly before the incident
Part of my company’s Challenging Behaviour Policy is to have a post-incident review within 72 hours of the incident ending. This gives everyone involved (both clients and staff) an opportunity to speak frankly about what happened, how they felt (and still feel), the triggers that led to the incident and what can be done to prevent a similar incident in future.
It is important to try not to apportion blame during this review, try to understand the point of view of others and come up with practical solutions to avoid these sorts of situations in the future.
The individual who exhibited challenging behaviour should be encouraged to discuss how they felt before the incident happened and what they think could have been done to prevent the incident. This information is vital to adjusting the individual’s support plan so that the triggers that caused the behaviour can be avoided in future.
Demonstrate methods to support an individual to return to a calm state following an incident of challenging behaviour
Again, the methods used to help an individual return to a calm state after an incident of challenging behaviour will be person-centred.
For some of my clients, simply leaving them alone to calm down themselves works well. For others, it may mean talking to them and giving them lots of attention – especially if the reason for the incident was because they felt they were being ignored. Some clients may need to get into bed and have a nap to return to a calm state and others may need to listen to soothing music.