Why It’s Important to Reflect on your PBS Practice
Introduction
I know, it’s that dreaded word - Reflection. The word that might make you feel a bit icky, a bit less confident, and a bit worried about what you’re going to find. I’ve been there too. I still go there. Unfortunately, you never really stop!
But maybe, if you can bear with me through the discomfort, it could be a chance for growth. A chance to explore new ideas. A chance to be accountable and take responsibility.
Sounds terrible, but in my experience, it’s a necessary part of our job. Without it, we run the risk of falling stagnant, becoming complacent in our work, in treating our participants too similarly, and in falling behind those who are being brave enough to face the awful truth that we’re not perfect and there’s always room to do things better.
If you’re like me, it’s not a nice feeling to be faced with that reality.
I find my colleagues struggle with this too. A mistake can knock a whole lot of confidence out of you. A lot of Behaviour Support Practitioners (BSPs) already have to face imposter syndrome in their daily practice, so when something goes wrong, it’s not difficult to start that spiral down. There’s been many times I’ve had to step in and bring them back to the reality that they’re actually pretty good at what they do. They care a lot. They want to do a good job. They want to help people.
Unfortunately, because of that, any sort of failing feels massive.
And, without a doubt, it will happen to you too. So, what can we do?
Let me share my ideas and experiences with you about reflecting on your PBS practice.
First Off - Don’t Panic!
The problem usually feels a whole lot bigger than it is.
Luckily, most of our work is not life or death. We are not crisis counsellors or emergency services. So when we make mistakes, it’s more likely to be related to our approach, our analysis, our Positive Behaviour Support Plan (PBSP), etc.
Maybe we’ve found out our function is wrong and we’re completely focusing on an ineffective replacement behaviour. Maybe you said something to a parent before your brain caught up with you or you wrote something into your PBSP which could be read as though you’re actually blaming them for everything. Maybe you ended up in an argument with a stakeholder that has been pushing back on you or hasn’t been willing to try any of your strategies, reducing the effectiveness and increasing the risk for everyone involved. You may experience the odd scenario when something in your strategies hasn’t worked out for your participant, and in worst case scenario, might’ve resulted in a further escalation or been ineffective in de-escalating the person.
Whatever it is, it can easily feel as though your career and dreams of becoming a top level BSP are crumbling around you. That’s just how our brains work. We get focused on the feeling of shame, embarrassment, guilt, or whatever our brain has thrown at us as some sort of weird survival mechanism. It can be really easy to get lost in that feeling (which is honestly great reflection too on what might be happening for our participants sometimes) because that’s just how we’re typically wired.
So, when you realise the feelings have got you hostage and you’re having trouble regulating your emotions, doing a reflection tool can really help bring us back to a tangible reality where we can try to objectively assess the situation, accept it, and find a way past it (though maybe it won’t be straight away).
When and Where to Reflect?
Just like with your participants, you need to be back at a stable baseline before you tackle any sort of reflection or debriefing. Otherwise, as we know, that spiral can quickly reappear and we’re stuck back in our feelings again.
So don’t rush it. Maybe it takes you a few hours, or maybe even a few days before you’re safe enough to tackle this. Everyone is different.
If you know yourself, you can ask your Supervisor or Line Manager to cue up some time in advance to let you talk it through. Or if you’re the type that prefers to work through your feelings and thoughts internally, put aside some proper time for it. You’ll want at least 30 minutes to an hour, depending on the depth of the issue to sit with it and go through some reflective practice.
For myself, I know I usually like to talk things through with another person once I’ve had enough time to get back in charge of my emotions. Having someone who is safe to share anything with is honestly gold in this career, so hopefully you can get that through work or your Supervisor.
However, I know there’s people in my team who really need support straight away. The longer I leave them, the more they’re going to get wrapped up in their negative cycle where it’s likely to feel worse over time. A lot of the time, once we work through it together, my team member realises it’s not the end of the world. They’re not about to have their registration revoked. And there’s a path forward, to resolve the situation and also to make us better practitioners in future after learning from this.
If you’re not familiar and comfortable with managing this kind of conversation or internal thinking process, I’d recommend using that tangible, objective tool we mentioned earlier.
What’s a Reflective Practice Tool or Framework?
This tool, framework, model, or whatever you want to call it, is just your cheat sheet for getting through the scenario from beginning to a resolution without gettting lost along the way. It usually steps you through the different aspects of a situation, not just what happened from A-Z but your feelings, your thoughts, and what else could’ve been done.
Let’s go through the key steps together.
Also, just a note that there’s already a Reflective Practice Tool sitting in our Store, available for a free download whenever you might need it.
What Kinds of Things Do I Need to Think About in a Reflection?
So let’s get into it. You’re sitting down, feeling brave, and ready to think or talk about it. What do you need to process?
Description - So what actually happened? Not your thoughts about what happened, but observable and factual information. For example, you got overwhelmed by too many documents due at the same time and you accidentally forgot to work on one for a participant. When the due date for this prompted you in your calendar, you realised you’d left it too late and had to rush the PBSP, cutting corners and not giving your participant the chance to be included in the process.
Feelings - What were you thinking and feeling at the time? Using our scenario, maybe you were thinking that you were going to get in trouble with your boss, the stakeholders, or maybe even the NDIS Commission. And the feelings that came along with that were panic, shame, embarrassment, sadness, frustration, etc. Panic due to the rush, shame and embarrassment as you know you could’ve done better, sadness because it’s confirmed you’re not as good as you thought, and frustration because why did your boss give you so many participants with PBSPs due??
Evaluation - What was good and bad about what happened? In our scenario, the good was that you recognised this wasn’t best practice and that you want to be a better practitioner than this, hence the reflection. The bad was that your participant may have received a PBSP that isn’t person-centred.
Analysis - What sense can you make out of what happened? In this case, you realise that you probably can’t cope with more than 2 PBSPs being due in the same month. And that your caseload has too many due dates in the second half of the year so there’s never a month where you don’t have at least 2-3 PBSPs due.
Conclusion - What else could you have done or perhaps should have done? Maybe you should’ve asked your Supervisor for advice as soon as you realised you’d have to rush the document (this is a conversation I’ve had more than once in the past with my Supervisees). Or maybe contacted the participant or their guardian to explain the situation and discuss the current options. In my experience, participants and stakeholders are usually okay to wait a little longer for someone who’s been transparent and honest with them. In my work as a BSP, I’ve seen that people typically become upset by a lack of communication with them more than anything else, so as long as you reach out and keep in touch, most people will be quite agreeable.
Action Plan - If this happens again, what would you do differently; or is there something you need to do now to ensure it doesn’t happen again or minimises the risk? Perfect - in this scenario, our analysis and conclusion are already leading us towards an answer, and better practice. We’ve recognised our realistic limits for how many PBSPs we can prepare before the quality of our work decreases, we’ve identified a problem in our caseload with having too many PBSPs due later in the year, and we recognise we should’ve talked to our Supervisor as soon as we recognised the problem. Partly to work on a solution, but also to just not have to be the one holding the problem alone anymore.
As you can see from the example I used, the action plan we concluded with - seeking support earlier and shifting things within your caseload to space out your due dates more - feels a whole lot more manageable than “I’m a terrible BSP, I can’t believe I forgot to do that, why am I even doing this job??” which is probably where the person started before we took the time to reflect.
Though, just to be mindful, the feelings won’t magically disappear after this. You’ll just be better equipped to deal with them. E.g. “I feel like a terrible BSP right now, but we’ve worked out what the main problem is and we’re fixing it. Now it won’t happen again and I’ll write better plans in future”.
Can I Use the Reflective Practice Model for Debriefing Others?
Yes, this absolutely also works as a debriefing tool for others you might work with. Don’t forget you can download it free straight from our Store too.
This might be a tool that the participant themselves can be trained in using, or you might train it to their support team to use with them, or possibly to the support team’s manager in order to engage in these conversations with staff.
I personally think debriefing is missed too often. Following incidents there’s a big focus on safety, compliance, risk, etc. But many times I’ve asked if someone’s talked to the participant or to the support staff member to do a debrief and no one has. So please do take this into your larger practice as well; everyone can benefit from knowing how to have a conversation like this, and it will make you and them feel braver and more confident in approaching these big messy events with lots of feelings.
What To Do in the Days Following a Cause for Reflection
I know that when I make a mistake and my confidence has been shaken, I like to take it easier for a few days after that (as much as possible).
So I might rearrange my calendar to more heavily focus on data, reports, meetings with my colleagues, which are all things that bring up my mood and that I’m confident in. There’s almost nothing better to bring back your energy and confidence than chatting away to your colleagues (assuming you get along!).
After a bit of time like that, I usually come out of my negative shell and feel like I can start tackling harder things, e.g. stakeholder meetings, running training, etc.
But you’ll have to find what works for you - I just wanted to share that you don’t have to bounce back straight away, especially if it was something that really challenged your perception of yourself as a BSP. You might need to have a few conversations with your Supervisor, or make extra time for self-care for a while, or maybe do a few more reflective moments about what you need. Maybe you’re trying to tell yourself something, maybe there’s something you feel you need or need to do.
Conclusion
My purpose in writing this article is to help encourage all BSPs - new and experienced - that none of us are perfect and we’re all still winging it sometimes. We make a mistake, we didn’t use best practice, we missed a deadline. It happens to everyone.
I hope reading this has given you the sense that it’s not the end of the world, but if you sit with the gross feelings and let yourself process them and explore the possibilities, it will lead you towards better practice in the future.
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