Partner Agencies: Preventing, Protecting, Restoring

Country Care follows the Preventing Protecting Restoring (PPR) Intervention by Birnie Training Consultant. This is a Crisis Prevention and management System that uses ‘reasonable force’ in ‘last resort’ circumstances to prevent crime, danger, and injury. The need to understand that the issue of “Last Resort” is often misunderstood. PPR believes it may be necessary to intervene at the start in order to prevent a “GREATER HARM FROM OCCURRING”.

Prevention Protection Restoring (PPR) is crisis prevention and management designed to reduce the need to rely on high-risk interventions. The programme provides a structure to help make sense of a young person’s difficult behaviour. Staff are taught specific techniques to prevent and mange crisis situations. This includes understanding the distinction between situational and maturational crisis and the use of a variety of intervention approaches and specific behaviour management techniques (e.g. caring gesture, prompting, planned ignoring and positive attention, hurdle help, time away). 

Staff also employ the Life Space Interview, a therapeutic, verbal strategy for intervening with young people that was developed by Redl and Wineman in the 1950s. This is an intervention that occurs in the child’s own life space, it uses their own reactions to difficult situations as a vehicle to change their behaviour and expand their understanding and insight into their own, and others, behaviour and feelings. The Life Space Interview can be used after any crisis event. It does not solve the problem; it is an ongoing strategy to help teach the child better coping skills. At Country Care all staff are consistent in the use of this technique.

Preventing Protecting Restoring (PPR) also teaches a range of safety interventions, including releases and physical restraint. Physical interventions rest on the principles of a maximum amount of caring with a minimum amount of force and the goal of de-escalating the situation by reducing stimulation.  Restraint is only used to increase safety.

Staff are continually observed and assessed whilst on the course and in practice. All parties play an active role in including reflective practice in real life situations, this ensures that staff remain vigilant and can analyse their own skills and practice and appraise the staffing team on how best to manage conflict situations with individual young people.