54. Supervision10 - Choices, Breaks, Support Center, Physical Intervention

Becoming Centered

Episode 54 concludes a four-episode arc, within the Unit Supervision Pathway, that presents the 10 techniques that make up the Hierarchy of Interventions. This episode focuses on how to implement these interventions in a way that goes beyond surface behavior management to supporting the development of self-regulation in children and youth.

This episode particularly focuses on the Forced-Choice and related Weighted-Choice techniques. These interventions leverage a program's consequence system to help child-clients make choices that determine whether or not they receive a consequence for any misbehaviors. That, in turn, supports the development of self-regulation over their own impluses and emotional-reasoning. These techniques are also a very effective way to help kids who struggle with taking responsibility for their own feelings, thoughts, and especially behaviors to mature. They are also excellent techniques for ending pointless control-battles between a staff person and a client.

Centering Breaks are similar to Time Outs, however, they add structures to the time that move the intervention beyond simply removing a client from an over-stimulating or triggering situation. These structures are individualized to the needs and abilities of individual kids, but are strategically intended to help each child or youth become emotionally, cognitively, behaviorally, and physiologically centered.

The Support Center structure and intervention is used by many multi-unit residential programs and schools to completely separate misbehaving kids from their peers. Typically, separate counselors staff the Support Center, providing a change of face as well as a Change-of-Environment. Ideally, Support Center counselors also Process the incidents that resulted in a child or youth being separated from the group. A structured approach to Processing is presented in prior podcast episodes.

Physical Interventions, including physical restraint, are techniques used in residential treatment programs to safely de-escalate or contain extreme behaviors. Processing afterwards is key for moving these interventions beyond behavior management to supporting the development of self-regulation in kids.