Safe Schools: Reducing Restrictive Practices and Managing Challenging Behaviour

The Cost of Challenging Behaviour

Challenging behaviour in schools affects everyone. At its worst, challenging behaviour can:

disrupt the learning environment
consume massive amounts of staff time and energy
damage the school’s reputation and OFSTED rating
take an emotional toll on teachers, pupils and other staff.

Of course, there’s no magic bullet for all challenging behaviours. But with insight, understanding and effective strategies, it is possible to drastically reduce its occurrence and impact.

This is the aim of Safe Schools: Reducing Restrictive Practices and Managing Challenging Behaviour.

Meeting the Restraint Reduction Training Standards

There is currently a focus on restraint reduction across the NHS, adult social care and education settings in the UK. Professional bodies and government departments now recognise the importance of reducing restraint wherever possible in therapeutic settings.

Building on the Use of Force Act (2018), NHS England has commissioned the Restraint Reduction Network to develop standards for the training, prevention and use of restrictive interventions. These Standards will be mandatory for all restrictive intervention training that is delivered to NHS-commissioned services (England only) for people with mental health conditions, learning disabilities, autistic people and people living with dementia in England. Implementation begins in April 2020.

The Standards focus on the human rights, restraint reduction, prevention, de-escalation, safe use and recovery. They have been written to apply across health and social care services, as well as education settings.

Before you book a training course on restraint reduction, it’s therefore vital to ensure that the trainer is in full compliance with the new standards.With that in mind, Safe Schools: Reducing Restrictive Practices and Managing Challenging Behaviour has been designed in accordance with the both the spirit and the substance of the Standards. Please view or download the document attached to see how the course content has been mapped to the Standards.

Meeting OFSTED inspection standards

The success with which a school or other institution manages student behaviour obviously has a profound impact on the judgements made by an OFSTED inspection team. Written and implemented by a school headteacher, the Safe School course helps institutions has been designed with full awareness of the OFSTED inspection criteria.

Please view or download the mapping document, which shows how each element of the course relates to the Education Inspection Framework and the School Inspection Handbook.

Safe Schools: Reducing Restrictive Practices and Managing Challenging Behaviour.

Course Summary

This course helps those working in a school environment to understand, anticipate, de-escalate and manage problematic student behaviour. It uses the Carnegie ABC System, a restorative approach that’s proven successful in a range of school environments.

Who should take this course?

Very few schools are free from challenging behaviour, so the course is suitable for any adult working in a school environment. It is particularly useful for senior managers, classroom teachers and those involved in pastoral care.

“What you have brought to the table at Eden has reduced the total of physical interventions by 86.7% and increased the overall attendance from 65% to 87.9% whole school.”

Chris Ford, Behaviour Lead, Eden School.

Duration and delivery

The course is designed to be delivered within a single day. Trainees will benefit from a mixture of expert-led sessions and interactive tasks in which they will discuss how the principles can be applied to their own environment.

Course Content

Understanding Behaviour: Staff will learn about their psychological responses to challenging behaviour, the needs and wants of the service user, the reasons why behaviour can escalate and how to plan for and manage it. This empowers staff to have high expectations for service users’ behaviour and conduct.
Communication: Staff will learn how to effectively communicate with service users and realise the impact of body language, tone of voice and facial expressions on students through an understanding of Betaris Box (Behaviour Cycle)
De- Escalation and re-regulation:
1. De-escalation techniques for use in the workplace
2. Classroom management and dynamic risk assessing
3. Forms and language of aggression
4. Re-regulating behaviour using individual plans and ABC charting.
Restrictive and Non-restrictive physical intervention: Staff will learn about the law and the use of reasonable force in the workplace.
Restorative Practice: users will learn the skills required to provide a restorative learning environment within the workplace.

Find Out More

There are a huge number of behaviour management courses available to schools. Most offer something useful to staff. However, few have the potential to really transform how a school thinks about and manages behaviour. We think that the Carnegie ABC system can deliver these step changes. Developed by a head teacher and extensively tested, this Safe Schools course is a worthwhile investment for any institution seeking to create a happier, safer place in which to learn and work.

IBA UK’s trainers have a wealth of experience in delivering security and behaviour management courses. We have worked successfully with many schools, helping their staff to feel more confident and better equipped to deal with challenging situations.

Bespoke Courses & Dates

You can book any of our courses to be run at a venue of your choosing. Let us know where and when you'd like the course to be run and we'll do our best to accommodate you.

Call us: 01793 855090

We're on hand to help. Send us a quick message and we'll get back to you: