The owner of the Crisis Consultant Group, LLC (Mr. Brendan King) had been working in the field of mental health for nearly 8 years when he grew frustrated with the ineffective crisis intervention training provided in the field. Having been trained as an instructor in many of these different programs, he had first hand knowledge of how unsafe, unrealistic, and usually ineffective techinques were. Over time he observed staff routinely being hurt. Clients within the organization were being injured. Crisis situations were often out of control, and handled poorly. He believed there had to be a better way to prevent, deal with, and intervene safely during crisis situations.
Beginning with a new perspective on the crisis cycle, a verbal intervention training curriculum was developed. It focused on teaching actual skills and techniques to use when dealing with someone in crisis, rather then just the theories behind the cycle itself. The importance of training responders to remain calm and professional during a verbal altercation was paramount, thus a major focus of the curriculum teaches ways for responders to avoid power struggles, actively listen, and appropriately respond to an escalated person before the situation escalates.
Once the verbal intervention curriculum was completed, Mr. King partnered up with a coworker who had an extensive background in Risk Management, Patient Rights, and Health and Human Services. They worked tirelessly with the assistance of an extremely skilled Martial Artist and Registered Nurse to perfect a series of physical intervention techniques that were highly effective, and extremely safe as well. All physical intervention techniques created had to minimize the threat present, maintain full compliance with all Federal, State, and Accreditation guidelines, and follow industry recommended best practices.
This was not an easy task.
Once completed, the material was then combined into a series of training course multimedia presentations and handbooks which were easy to understand and geared towards adult learning theories for excellent retention and comphrension. Competency based testing was built into the curriculum to ensure that each and every student not only retained the information presented, but was able to perform the skills and techniques when needed under stress-induced, realistic role-play scenarios.
The end result is a series of training courses that our clients report as one of, if not the best training course they have ever attended. A powerful combination of verbal and physical intervention techniques that combine to manage nearly every crisis situation they encounter.
