We serve many individuals with intense behavioral needs and although we respond to crisis very quickly there are still numerous injuries to staff and clients/students. Because of these injuries we are concerned about the constant threat of litigation.

I would expect that even a safe and respected organization, serving very challenging individuals, would have at least some crisis-related injuries, but that they would be very infrequent and minor, not requiring medical attention

Lately, crises are occurring so frequently that it is beginning to take a toll on our staff as evidenced by our increase in staff injuries, requests for reassignments, frequent absences (eating up our supplementary staffing budget) and sometimes even resignation.

I would expect a safe and respected organization to have staff who look forward to coming to work because they know they can be safe and effective in their jobs. I would naturally expect such staff to give high job satisfaction ratings as well.

We feel like we are in a “Catch-22” situation with the use of physical restraint. Everyone understands the importance of keeping people safe, however some people feel the individuals might be safer if no one restrained them at all. Additionally, it is very difficult to convince people that restraining them momentarily might be the best thing to do.

We would expect that a safe and respected organization should have buy-in for the judicious use of restraint. Not just from those who would directly benefit from its use, but from those who might normally object to its use. We don’t expect every player to be equally positive about the use of restraint, but we would expect that at least all players understand the importance of restraint and permit its use.

We are accustomed to working with individuals with a variety of behavior problems, but sometimes the problems are just so severe that we cannot maintain safety for the individual. When we cannot ensure safety for an individual due to uncontrollable behavior problems, we often end up referring them to a more restrictive placement which is always more expensive yet does NOT always mean that behavioral improvements will follow.

Most certainly part of being a safe organization means that the staff can keep themselves and the individual safe from harm. Part of being a respected organization would be that it ensures that staff acquire the skills that will help them be highly effective. These organizations are respected because they rise up to meet a new challenge through education and training. Organizations that “cherry pick” only those individuals who only have minor problems have not really achieved very much and are therefore far less respected by peers.

Our current system of crisis management is not meeting the needs of our organization. As a consequence, instead of being recognized for the good work we do, we are starting to become known for our high level of crises and we are concerned that this might affect our reputation.

We would expect a safe and respected organization to use a system that is highly effective at preventing most crises and at stopping them safely when they do occur. We would also expect that the chosen system actually improves our reputation rather than ruins it.

Although there have always been bits of pieces of various crisis management trainings that have worked here and there with some individuals and not with others, there is no consistent theme or philosophy that ties strategies and procedures together in a manner that integrates with our own philosophy of teaching and treatment. In fact some of the strategies suggested may run completely counter to what we know to be best practice

A respected organization would use a system that is cohesive from start to finish and that aligns with our evidence-based educational and treatment practices.

We really want to give our staff the best training possible, but we fear that something thorough enough to actually meet our needs will be too expensive and/or time consuming; not only in terms of the initial start up costs and time, but in the maintenance of such a system annually on a facility-wide basis.

That organization would get the right type of crisis management system, one that is affordable and can be implemented with the least amount of disruption to the organization.