A day in the life of…David Hitchin, Clinical Positive Behaviour Advisor

Tell us about your role.

“I am part of the Clinical team. We cover the clinical needs across ECL’s day services and Inclusive Employment, plus I am available for consultancy across other ECL services if needed.”

Most people know how the clinical team support our day centre customers, but tell us how you support Inclusive Employment customers?

“With regards to Inclusive Employment I help customers where there are challenges with certain behaviours that may be presenting an issue in the role they are in or as a barrier to obtaining employment. I will go into the workplace if that’s appropriate and work with the customer and the employer to make reasonable adjustments to alter the environment to try to resolve the challenging behaviours.”

Tell us about your career to date.

“Prior to joining ECL I worked in the education sector. Starting as a teacher then moving into senior leadership, eventually becoming a head teacher. My passion for behaviour came from my experience as a teacher. I was a head teacher at a pupil referral unit, working with children that had been excluded from mainstream school for behavioural issues. This role is very different in comparison to being a head teacher. In this job I get to focus more on behaviour which is ideal for me.”

What does a typical day look like for you?

“There’s no typical day as every customer that I work with is different. But I can explain the ‘typical’ process in terms of how I work. Firstly, managers from our day services and Inclusive Employment teams refer a customer in. This referral gets triaged, and if accepted is passed over to me to begin working with. People are referred for different reasons, but primarily it is down to two things, either their quality of life is being impacted in negative way by their behaviour or because the challenging behaviour is dangerous in some way either to themselves or to others around them.

“Every customer’s needs are different and the plans we create are tailored to each individual but essentially there are three steps that I work through that are the same for every customer. Firstly, I meet the customer and build a rapport, meet the people that support them and their families.

“I then analyse the behaviour using what we call a functional behavioural assessment. Everything that we do has a reason for it, this assessment establishes the reasons that could be behind the behaviour. Through observation and reviewing behaviour incident forms, speaking to carers, family, support workers I can understand the reasons they’re performing those challenging behaviours.

“It is then my job to try and help those supporting our customers create a capable environment for that person while in our care, so that we can change that behaviour and improve their quality of life and ensure they get the most from their time in our services. This takes time and needs to be consistently reviewed and refined to establish what works and what doesn’t work for that individual. I also work alongside other third parties that might be overseeing their care such as learning disabilities services within the NHS or Adult Social Care to help create plans or help with their information gathering procedures and vice versa. I might use their reports to gather information to help create my behavioural plans. Once we are satisfied that the individual’s quality of life has improved and the ECL support team are confident they have the tools in their armoury needed to manage any recurrences of the behaviour, then the referral is closed.

“I also advise on training ECL colleagues on behavioural support. I can’t do as much of this as I’d like as I don’t have the capacity, but we work with an outsourced training provider called Studio 3 who offer face-to-face and webinar training for Day Opportunities Support Workers to help them work with challenging behaviours.”

What do you love most about your role?

“I love that I get to improve people’s quality of life. Individuals having behavioural issues are behaving in a certain way because something about what’s happening in their life is aversive, they are not enjoying it. What I do helps that person build tolerance to the element causing this reaction so that they can enjoy a broader spectrum of activities and social interactions. I also help the people who that support that person understand what is causing the behaviour so that that the person’s quality of life improves. Knowing that you are improving somebody’s life is the best feeling.”

Advice to those interested in positive behaviour support:

“I’d say research is key. Read up and understand a bit about what a capable environment is and if you are in a support role, you can then start to apply some of those principles to how you work - we can all tweak our environment to adjust other people’s behaviour. Also make yourself known the clinical team because we are always looking for people to help improve our practice. Shadowing is always good too, come and shadow us and see what we do. I would always be willing to have people shadow me if that person’s line manager agrees.”

What are your future aspirations for the team?

“Since being with ECL I’ve written a new behaviour policy and we’ve got a new referral form system up and running. I’d like to see this go further. In a perfect world more people across the business would understand the role that they have in impacting behaviour and be really knowledgeable about what positive behaviour support is. This is what we are working towards, and it’s going to take time. Ideally there would be more people with specialisms in positive behavioural support across our services to be champions for their particular hubs, enabling us to support even more people than we do now, across every service area.”