Well, this is a week that is increasingly rare – I am at
home, and not working.Being on the road
as I am has some really good things going for it, but there is nothing that can
compare to sleeping in, going fishing with my son out on the lake, and seeing
“Inception” with a friend.So no
blogging this week, and next week, as promised, I’ll share some more stories
from people I have met.Until then, rest
easy.
Newport, New Hampshire is nowhere near the ocean, but it
is on a huge lake in the middle of New Hampshire. After driving through
mountains (people in Colorado would call these mountains “hills!”) and
losing signal through AT&T (nothing new there!!), I came to Pathways
New Hampshire. What you need to know about me is that before I became
the CEO of The Mandt System, Inc., I spent over 25 years in residential
and vocational support settings, and the people here reminded me that
human services requires human servants to interact with people who need
our support. The staff at Pathways New Hampshire are servants, and they
have taken what we teach in The Mandt System® and integrated it into
their organizational culture. They retained all of the non-physical
skills we teach, and were able to tell me what to do and how to use the
models we include in our training. While they could not tell me exactly
what the acronyms stood for, they know how to use the tool, and that is
more important! In the settings I visited, physical skills are rarely
needed, so I did not test them. I did test staff in another setting,
where the retention was at 80%. I know we require 100% to pass the test,
but 80% will keep you pretty safe! In all honesty, the non-physical
skills are the most effective ones we have, and while I want high levels
of retention in both non-physical and physical skills, if you don’t
have a high level of non-physical skill, your physical skills alone
won’t keep you safe. Next week I’ll tell you about a situation in
Edmonton, Alberta, where non-physical skills saved a staff person’s
life.
The second place I went to in Maine was Dover-Foxcroft,
about 30 miles northwest of Bangor. It’s a great drive, and I was hoping
to see a moose (didn’t!). The Charlotte White Center there supports
people affected by developmental disabilities in community based
residential programs, and many of the staff I talked to had not done a
restraint in the last year at all. The retention of non-physical skills
was again above 90%, while physical skill retention fell to just over
70%. As I listened to staff talk and interact with each other, I was
again struck by the way in which our certified trainers have taken what
we teach them and applied it in such creative and caring ways within
their organizations. The most fun I had this day was listening to people
ask and answer questions about how to respond to people when they
escalate through the Crisis Cycle. Instead of giving me the “stock”
answers on the test, they told me how they individualize the approaches
we teach to really serve the consumers they support. One of our phrases
is that we “support people, not just their behaviors” and this
philosophy is lived out at the Charlotte White Center.
Last week I was in Maine, completing two weeks of training. After a restful week-end at Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park, I went to two organizations in Maine and one in New Hampshire that use The Mandt System® and did “fidelity checks”, testing the staff who were trained by people we certified to be trainers. What an amazing experience. Today I’ll tell you about the Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center in Bangor, Maine. It looks like most state operated psychiatric hospitals built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the buildings are all very similar. But inside, where the people live and staff work, things were definitely different. I could feel the difference as I observed staff and patients interact with each other, as they shared that they went 64 days this year without an episode of seclusion in the hospital, and how people felt safer. Injuries to staff are down over 80%, and the staff to staff interactions were marvelously supportive.
They were a little nervous when I told them I was there to test them, and then blew me away with their knowledge. On the non-physical skills, their retention was 91%, and on the physical skills, it was 83%. They demonstrated a great awareness of the non-coercive approach to changing behavior that we teach, it was a marvelous experience to be with so many caring and professional staff. Kudos to you!!
