Yesterday someone on Twitter claimed that PBS “is never aversive”

Let me introduce you to CALM

https://calmtraining.co.uk/services/training/

The same framework and 2-stage technique is known as Team Teach elsewhere in the UK

I’m choosing to talk about CALM as that’s the system I know and under the legal framework I’m familiar with (we do not have SEND or EHCP here), but all of this also applies to Team Teach as both are brand names for ‘positive handling’ courses.

Module/stage 1 of CALM is PBS

Module/stage 2 is “legally defensible approaches” - this is an euphemism for restraint

The idea being that PBS methods are first stage de-escalation and restraint is a final nuclear option. PBS itself technically isn’t aversive, but as soon as the PBS runs out, the child gets slammed to the floor. This is aversive. It’s also harmful.

In practice, a subset of children - who either don’t understand PBS or don’t react to it - repeatedly experience restraint under CALM. If you talk to anyone who uses these techniques, they’ll tell you it’s the same 3/4 kids who get restrained week in, week out.

A further subset will be restrained X amount of times before realising how it works and, as soon as the PBS mantras come out to play, will start behaving or shut down to avoid the restraint. In these cases, the PBS *is* the aversive.

The most common hold is a “wrap hold” where the child’s arms are crossed over their front and held behind their back by an adult. This can be done standing, or in a chair (“basket hold”). There is no time limit on this. There’s also no lower age limit.

Of course, supporters will tell you that CALM only happens to children who display “challenging behaviour”

Let’s have a look at the official definition of “challenging” behaviour, shall we

The last two are clearly open to interpretation. Challenging behaviour is in the eye of the beholder.

Also, here is a list of things that may lead to “challenging behaviour”. Can you think of a better way to solve these? Is it acceptable for someone to have their limbs restrained for ten minutes for feeling “cold”?

“This is poorly implemented PBS/lacks PBS training”

CALM is BiLD accredited and TT was until they withdrew from the accreditation scheme. A person can be CALM trained in 6 hours. Training standards need looked at across the board.

“What about using PBS without the restraint?”

People who have been subject to restraint via CALM and TT will relive those PBS experiences, which may lead to trauma responses, which are often as miscast as challenging behaviour, & the restraint cycle starts again.

It never fails to astonish me how the simple circle of traumatising incident = trauma response is distorted in disability.

There’s so much more I can say, but I’m gonna leave PBS there and make a second, related point.

For some reason, every time there’s a disability there needs to be an “approach”

All education staff have to complete X cpd hours per year, this is very important, but also leaves opportunity for outside providers to sell cpd courses, not all of which are good.

CALM and TT are both brands, they exist to sell courses. This is the same for every “approach”

No one ever suggests abandoning “approaches” and implementing basic standards, for example treating disabled children the same as all other pupils as a decent floor of decency.

Because that doesn’t make money or win awards.

Currently approaches are being marketed as “alternatives” to current bad practice, despite the fact they’re often the same interventions that have existed unchanged for decades but repackaged as somehow innovative. People continually fall for it.

The current trend of viewing approaches as black & white good or bad in name only is harmful, the ethics of all of them should be up for debate, especially the ones that have been embedded in schools for decades with no real evidence that they’re working other than punitively.

You made it to the End, well done, here is a puppy