Effective De-escalation in Complex Needs Services | Doremi Littlewood & Simon Holding

Simon is Adult Health & Social Care Lead at Team Teach and is part of the Learning and Development team. He has worked extensively within adult social care, including residential, short-break and day services, supported living settings, and care homes. He is an Intermediate and Advanced Team Teach trainer, delivering training to a wide range of services, and was part of the first authority to adopt Team Teach training for adult social care.

They also share three tips during the episode:

80-90% of communication is non-verbal, so it’s vital to pay attention to your own body language, gestures, and stance, reflecting on how these influence the behaviours you would rather see.

Staff teams should be aware of the characteristics of an effective de-escalator, as this facilitates effective de-escalation at all times, not just when behaviours of concern are present.

Being self-aware allows you to be emotionally available to others and forge strong therapeutic relationships with service users based on trust, consistency, and fairness.

The Team Teach podcast shares the latest thinking in behaviour, all in handy 15-minute (ish) bite-sized chunks. Each episode features a new guest chatting about a different aspect of behaviour and leaves you with three handy tips to use in your setting.