51. Supervision7 - The Hierarchy of Interventions

This episode on the Unit Supervisor Learning Pathway moves away from a focus on managerial skills and switches to a focus on counseling skills to be taught to direct-care Child Care Counselors.  It presents 10 interventions, or techniques, for Counselors to use with kids when they become off-track, dysregulated, and uncentered.  Skillful use of this package of interventions starts with understanding the ways in which they can be thought of as forming a hierarchy.  That includes the higher up interventions being increasingly disruptive to the group environment of the residential unit, being an increasingly heavy-handed display of the staff being in charge, and requiring more judgement and skill from staff so that the intervention de-escalates the situation rather than causing an ecalation.  However, these ten interventions are not like a true hierarchy in that staff can start anywhere on the scale, can use the interventions in various combinations, and even that some of the interventions can be thought of as just examples of the other interventions. 

This episode goes on to take a closer look at three interventions at the bottom of the hierarchy: distraction, engaging, and verbal redirections.  Distraction is frequently the first intervention used for interrupting an emerging pattern of dysregulation.  Engaging is the most frequent intervention that should be used by residential staff in that it provides the kids with practice at co-regulating with a calmer and more psychologically and neurologically organized person.  Improved co-regulation skills leads to improved self-regulation skills.  Verbal Redirection is regularly used to support the development of kids' self-awareness, and is frequently used with having kids Practice or Over-Practice a desired behavior and in combination with Listening Checks.