A stich in nine saves time a disablity perspective.

 

This is amazing how a little bit of attention before things get out of hand is amazing how a little bit of attention in doing something difficult in sending an email to the head office of my housing facility has saved a whole lot of drama down the line.

I realise in writing this that we need to take a few steps back, so I have been living with a few things in my housing facility that I say aren’t ok and I have just lived above them but now it’s  was time to speak up. One being a neighbour that has complex and challenging behaviour’s of concern, and has extreme mental health issues that we are working with and I have compassion and understanding as she isn’t attached to reality and its something that we all understand but I feel and the support staff feel at times some is attention seeking and not mental health.

I discovered that a few support workers are going to need to do a massive please explain in that they are on the dot of time or running late and not just the odd occasion that happens to the best of us egg the  alarm didn’t go off the kids didn’t want to get up not this is a well I start at this time so that is when I am going to roll in the gate of the unit complex I am in, and this is ok in retail or other industry’s that aren’t client facing but in this profession that could harm lives.

But what the hell are restrictive practices any way and what is so controversial about them, well the first one is that they are restrictive its in the name but so many people who are calling for them to be banned I would question if you have seen what happens when they are used well. They are actually designed for short term usage to re direct the clients away  from harm and to get them used to more productive and constructive emotional and behaviour strategies, we are seeing that what some people are calling for are unapproved restrictive practices and there I can agree that they aren’t ok but until you have seen abuse first hand of support and care staff you really can’t  see why they are needed until you can.

To use them a person needs to go to a positive behaviour practioner and this is someone who specializes s in behavior of concern, and difficult and challenging behaviour’s and the difference is massive, we all at times have difficult and challenging behaviour’s, the silent treatment, the rage cleaning, the did you look comment. However behavours of concern are that behaviour’s even in a disability contenxt would concern others so kicking, biting, yelling, self harm, throwing things that aren’t meant to be thrown, so it’s something that we can see does need to be looked a differently, to other forms of disability practices, hey I agree that we shouldn’t use them, at what we are doing well yes and there is a lot of paperwork that goes with what a good use of these practices looks like, the first thing is , is the client unwell and is there something physically going on so we are starting to realise that this is a massive thing for a lot of people with physocial disabilities, they don’t know how to tell you that they are physically unwell, or that something hurts them, then when this is knocked out are they in the right environment as we all know about sick building syndrome and how that over time it can lower peoples IQ and general cognitive abilities, in that Mold and volatile organic compounds and building material can make people sick.

Then we see that its off for a full medication review and this is really important as it means that all of the medication a person is taking is being use appropriately for its use and not as a means for changing behaviour, as all medication should be used as a last resort and not a first resort in what we see some facilities go to, and medically complex people it’s important to have a pharmacist on the care team and a local independent one even better as they stop the doctors from killing patients as many times and I have had this in my own families life is that they see where if a person is seeing many medical professionals that there can be an extreme risk of polypharmacy and this is where drug interactions get really dangerous,  and polypharmacy and disability has it’s own practice warning on the NDIS quality and safeguard’s commission,  around medications used to treat physio -social  disablites such as Autism, ADHD, intellectual disability and other mental health conditions.

Lets also see that they are used in conjunction with appropriate training in redirection when a person has behaviours of concern and difficult behaviour’s and the need for staff to remember it’s not about them and it may be a response to something that happened long ago but they couldn’t react to it or have emotions so they don’t know how to handle them and emotions are a big thing to handle when you haven’t had a chance to express them and we labled emotions as good and bad but it’s more complex than that, there are times when what we could consider negative emotions as appropriate  or even reasonable but in disability settings we are told and actively encouraged  to supress them but at times when some at 6am in the morning is loud and your trying to sleep because you have work the next day that’s ok to be grumpy because of it, but being grumpy the whole day isn’t ok, being annoyed because you where looking forward to take away night and someone in the house blew it for everyone yep be annoyed but its how long these emotions last and I am also asking the question that another online creator is asking is are we medicating normal away and we need then to ask the question what is normal in disability and that is a really complex question so lets ask what is a normal baseline for this client and we can get that through functional capacity assessment and mental health progress reports as well as brain mapping, all tools we have to look at how the brain works, and it ok to need these tools or want to use them to fight for funding. But the biggest one is simply observing the client day to day.

What is their self regulation skills like and do they need help with them, and how do they handle big emotions when they haven’t been taught to, and to gain attention in a positive manner.

Then a positive behaviour support practioner is brought in to assess the person and the use of these practices isn’t intended to be long term usage it’s a tool to get the person to a place where the no longer need them and have the tools the need to cope and to live a positive happy life.

There is complex cases for both sides but when used as what they are a tool to help people live safely in society well then we see that people are ok with them being used but them being used as punishment for unfair behavour well it’s something that we need to talk about how we use them and why we use them as does the client need to work on a better diet and a healthy relationship with food or getting taught the skills needed to keep to a budget but we don’t consider supported decision making or gardeniship around finace is harmful but not considered a  resction its considered harm reduction and that amazes me when we see the forced povoty that this can push people into when public services aren’t funded well, to the point I am getting my life documents out of the public trustee to a private firm, and looking at a living trust.  

This is amazing how a little bit of attention before things get out of hand is amazing how a little bit of attention in doing something difficult in sending an email to the head office of my housing facility has saved a whole lot of drama down the line.

I realise in writing this that we need to take a few steps back, so I have been living with a few things in my housing facility that I say aren’t ok and I have just lived above them but now it’s  was time to speak up. One being a neighbour that has complex and challenging behaviour’s of concern, and has extreme mental health issues that we are working with and I have compassion and understanding as she isn’t attached to reality and its something that we all understand but I feel and the support staff feel at times some is attention seeking and not mental health.

I discovered that a few support workers are going to need to do a massive please explain in that they are on the dot of time or running late and not just the odd occasion that happens to the best of us egg the  alarm didn’t go off the kids didn’t want to get up not this is a well I start at this time so that is when I am going to roll in the gate of the unit complex I am in, and this is ok in retail or other industry’s that aren’t client facing but in this profession that could harm lives.

But what the hell are restrictive practices any way and what is so controversial about them, well the first one is that they are restrictive its in the name but so many people who are calling for them to be banned I would question if you have seen what happens when they are used well. They are actually designed for short term usage to re direct the clients away  from harm and to get them used to more productive and constructive emotional and behaviour strategies, we are seeing that what some people are calling for are unapproved restrictive practices and there I can agree that they aren’t ok but until you have seen abuse first hand of support and care staff you really can’t  see why they are needed until you can.

To use them a person needs to go to a positive behaviour practioner and this is someone who specializes s in behavior of concern, and difficult and challenging behaviour’s and the difference is massive, we all at times have difficult and challenging behaviour’s, the silent treatment, the rage cleaning, the did you look comment. However behavours of concern are that behaviour’s even in a disability context would concern others so kicking, biting, yelling, self harm, throwing things that aren’t meant to be thrown, so it’s something that we can see does need to be looked a differently, to other forms of disability practices, hey I agree that we shouldn’t use them, at what we are doing well yes and there is a lot of paperwork that goes with what a good use of these practices looks like, the first thing is , is the client unwell and is there something physically going on so we are starting to realise that this is a massive thing for a lot of people with physical disabilities, they don’t know how to tell you that they are physically unwell, or that something hurts them, then when this is knocked out are they in the right environment as we all know about sick building syndrome and how that over time it can lower peoples IQ and general cognitive abilities, in that Mold and volatile organic compounds and building material can make people sick.

Then we see that its off for a full medication review and this is really important as it means that all of the medication a person is taking is being use appropriately for its use and not as a means for changing behaviour, as all medication should be used as a last resort and not a first resort in what we see some facilities go to, and medically complex people it’s important to have a pharmacist on the care team and a local independent one even better as they stop the doctors from killing patients as many times and I have had this in my own families life is that they see where if a person is seeing many medical professionals that there can be an extreme risk of polypharmacy and this is where drug interactions get really dangerous,  and polypharmacy and disability has it’s own practice warning on the NDIS quality and safeguard’s commission,  around medications used to treat physo -social  disabilities such as Autism, ADHD, intellectual disability and other mental health conditions.

Lets also see that they are used in conjunction with appropriate training in redirection when a person has behaviours of concern and difficult behaviour’s and the need for staff to remember it’s not about them and it may be a response to something that happened long ago but they couldn’t react to it or have emotions so they don’t know how to handle them and emotions are a big thing to handle when you haven’t had a chance to express them and we labled emotions as good and bad but it’s more complex than that, there are times when what we could consider negative emotions as appropriate  or even reasonable but in disability settings we are told and actively encouraged  to supress them but at times when some at 6am in the morning is loud and your trying to sleep because you have work the next day that’s ok to be grumpy because of it, but being grumpy the whole day isn’t ok, being annoyed because you where looking forward to take away night and someone in the house blew it for everyone yep be annoyed but its how long these emotions last and I am also asking the question that another online creator is asking is are we medicating normal away and we need then to ask the question what is normal in disability and that is a really complex question so lets ask what is a normal baseline for this client and we can get that through functional capacity assessment and mental health progress reports as well as brain mapping, all tools we have to look at how the brain works, and it ok to need these tools or want to use them to fight for funding. But the biggest one is simply observing the client day to day.

What is their self regulation skills like and do they need help with them, and how do they handle big emotions when they haven’t been taught to, and to gain attention in a positive manner.

Then a positive behaviour support practioner is brought in to assess the person and the use of these practices isn’t intended to be long term usage it’s a tool to get the person to a place where the no longer need them and have the tools the need to cope and to live a positive happy life.

 

I have also discovered that they are re-assessing my house mate for use of restrictive practices  and I know that they are a human right’s abuse but when they are use in conjunction with other things and not as a first resort but as a last resort we see that things are going to change for me for the better and that by getting my shit at least into one place I can then work on other things like leveling up the patron and substack

 

I have also discovered that they are re-assessing my house mate for use of restrictive practices  and I know that they are a human right’s abuse but when they are use in conjunction with other things and not as a first resort but as a last resort we see that things are going to change for me for the better and that by getting my shit at least into one place I can then work on other things like leveling up the patron and substack as well as putting more time and effort into making my place feel like I am not just existing here but its my home as it is as I am safe and loved by my house mates.