Choosing Workers Who Fit the Plan, Not Just the Roster

In behaviour support planning, the environment, the routine, the approach to communication, the reinforcement landscape, all these and more are regarded as clinical variables. The composition of the support team, however, is typically considered as the other party's logistics, they will hire whomever they want, they will have whomever to choose from, they will initially accept whoever is offered. But ask any accomplished practitioner to look back at his or her own history of results and a pattern emerges that it would be hard to argue with: One team does it one way, and another team does it another, and the only difference is not training alone. It is the temperament of the workers, the consistency of their work, their relationship with the person, and the group of workers. I've been in many situations where I've been able to have a say in who was selected, and in that case I eliminated one of the largest unmanaged factors that could impact my outcome.

What plan-fit actually consists of

Temperament under escalation.  Plans depend on the fact that the person isn't “flat affect” when the plan is to be low stimulation, or warm without flap when the plan is to be warm. This is a trainable, but mostly dispositional attribute; it is observable in interviews, in meet and greets, in workers' recollection of past incidents, if anyone is watching.

A quality of consistence.  Some employees are great improvisers, a quality that is almost always required at work except in behaviour support, where predictability is required. Fit in a no-brainer: if this worker has described refining their own processes for past clients, then here, they are describing a strength that is a risk to manage.

Relationship abilities with this individual.  The functionality is important: if the behaviour is about connection, the team needs workers with whom he or she can connect, if the behaviour is about escaping from demand, the low-demand interactional type of the workers initiates the process. The shared interests, communication compatibility and the person's own reaction are data that do selection.

True to history, the bad bits.  Experience of behaviours of concern is more as a conversation than a credential: situations that it has been used to support, what behaviours were used, what was learned, what behaviours will not be used with. Men and women who are able to express their fear, yours, candidly, are safer than those who say they have no fear.

Getting selection influence without overreach

Rostering is not something that practitioners usually have any control over, nor should they have any control over the choice of the participant; but there are 3 valid points at which practitioners can influence. Include the worker's attributes on the plan itself during the referral and review stage, this plan will need a worker who can keep his E.E. low when things escalate; maintain the same response across incidents; and interact with his interest in trains, this way, instead of temperament being folklore, it becomes an actual implementation requirement that providers and families can hire for. During recruitment provide the provider or family with a brief screening conversation or scenario question set with candidates during the recruitment process, 10 mins which predicts more than most reference checks. At matching, where users and families search directly, sites such as Support Network allow them to narrow down by behaviour support experience and read profiles through your attribute list, and their response to the meeting as the ultimate filter. The selection is of the participant's and provider's, the criteria are yours and legitimate.

How this plays out in practice

Imagine two houses with almost the same plan, whilst residents' behaviours are an escape from demand. The first one has a roster of who's available, and the most common person there is capable, kind, relentlessly encouraging, a bad read for this resident and the data grinds sideways. The second is where the plan spells out the attributes of the implementer, the provider hires on those attributes and the core workers share a low-demand natural style. One set of data level and one declining, all with the same strategies, the same training and the same review cycle. The one clinical variable that was not controlled was the only one that changed.

Next steps

For your next plan, add an implementer-attributes paragraph that will consist of 3 sentences describing the temperament, consistency and relational qualities this plan demands. It's free and it turns luck into specification in selecting workers.