Prevention and Management Control Measures for Violent and Aggressive Behaviour
Implementing a successful management and prevention strategy for violent and aggressive behaviour must involve a holistic approach, creating synergy throughout an integrated organisational response in order to safe guard the health and wellbeing of your employees whilst at the same time reducing the liability of your organisation.
Betaris acknowledge that simply training your employees in how to deal with violent and aggressive behaviour can be a self fulfilling prophecy, if your employees only know how to deal with violent and aggressive behaviour then that is exactly what they will do.
In simplistic terms most violent and aggressive behaviour is a matter of cause and effect. A number of contributing factors cause the effect of violent and aggressive behaviour to occur. If your employees are empowered to identify the contributing factors that trigger the behavioural sequence and then remove those triggers, the probability of the violent and aggressive behaviour occurring is significantly reduced promoting positive behaviour in its place which is reflected in your productivity and profitability.
The skills and knowledge used in actually dealing with violent and aggressive behaviour then become emergency procedures instead of daily routines.
Primary CONTROL MEASURES
- Ensure the number of staff on duty and their level of competence corresponds to the needs of your service users
- Ensure organisational policy and procedures are adequate for each role performed within the organisation
- Ensure that your risk assessments are current and take into consideration environmental factors, job design, and functional analysis to promote the identification of triggers to violent and aggressive behaviour
- Where possible remove identified triggers and avoid situations that are known to provoke violent and aggressive behaviour
- Develop staff expertise where training needs analysis has identified gaps in knowledge and skills
Secondary CONTROL MEASURES
Secondary control measures involve recognising the early stages of a behavioural sequence that is likely to develop into violence or aggression and employing emergency ‘defusion’ techniques to avert any further escalation.
TERTIARY CONTROL MEASURES
Tertiary control measures involve the physical skill suite to disengage from physical contact or to hold and contain a service user to prevent physical and psychological harm to themsleves, members of staff, harm to other service users, or damage to property. Tertiary control measures also include the post incident support for the victim and in certain cases the aggressor and managing the incident through to recovery. All betaris physical skills are non-aggressive and have undergone legal and medical review.