News
Creative Intervention Training Responses for Untoward Situations (CITRUS)
Calderstones NHS Trust
Ian Hall, Learning and Development Manager (Calderstones NHS Trust).
Calderstones NHS Trust provides a specialist learning disability service through community houses, medium and low secure facilities. The history of clients admitted to the Trust is varied; many are aggressive and violent, whilst others are particularly vulnerable. The Trust identified a need to provide training to enable staff to deliver effective care to patients and to restore staff confidence in managing aggressive and violent clients (which in turn reduced the number of incidents and staff sickness, and improved the recruitment and retention of staff).
It was important that the model of training developed took account of the vulnerabilities of people with learning disabilities. It is the focus on this area that makes it unique and innovative, and makes it attractive and transferable
to a wide range of service providers who would find other training models too aversive.
CITRUS is a unique, adaptable and versatile training model that can be tailored to a particular employee’s need (e.g. to help them to manage a particular ‘type’ of patient, such as an elderly patient with dementia). Staff at Calderstones NHS Trust, and 20 other health, social and private care providers that have adopted the CITRUS model, have all expressed high levels of satisfaction (measured through incident reports, complaints, focus groups, sickness/absence, recruitment and retention, etc).