There may be times when working with young people that they present with challenging behaviours. This may be in the form of their actions, how they choose to express themselves and how they engage with professionals and their peers. By using positive interventions in the face of challenging behaviour you are aiming to prevent the behaviour escalating or being repeated, rather than punishing the behaviour. Positive interventions are proactive and encourage good behaviour in their approach.

Build a positive relationship

• Listen, talk and be interested
• Give praise and positive feedback
• Reward good behaviour with more attention than bad
• Show interest in their interests
• Do things together

Accidental rewards and escalation traps

Be aware that you may fall into negative practices when faced with challenging behaviour. Ask yourself?

• Are you giving a disproportionate amount of time and attention to one individual?
• Is there a chance you are colluding with the young person because of shared life experiences or over emphasising?
• Is the young person using delay techniques to avoid engaging with you? Or are you avoiding the young person because you know interacting with them will be challenging?
• If the young person makes enough fuss do you back down?
• Are you spending too much time making a fuss until a young person eventually complies?
• Have I challenged a young person before and felt it went badly, so I am less likely to challenge again?

If you answered yes to any of the above questioned you may need to try a different positive intervention approach.

Five approaches to positive interventions

• Structuring approach
• Listening approach
• Directing approach
• Relating approach
• Teaching approach

Approaches to interventions that do not work

• Focusing on the adults goals for the young person rather than their own
• Uncertainty about the purpose of the intervention
• Interventions coming from a negative viewpoint of the young person and with no focus on positive behaviour.
• Ignoring the challenging attitude. Attitude thrives when we do nothing to address it.
• Judging the young person and implying to them that they are bad, wrong or stupid will stop any further constructive discussion.
• Responding out of anger or fear
• Arguing with a young person, you can not argue with irrationality
• Making a show in front of an audience. If a young person is confronted in front of their friends they are unlikely to back down.
• Making threats that you are not prepared to follow through. If you say you will inform the police about someone’s behaviour make sure you do.
• Comparing the young person’s situation to your own, the situations might seem similar but are likely to be very different.
• Associating yourself with one definite position, if the young person changes their mind/attitude they may feel unable to return to you for help.

Approaches to interventions that sometimes work

• Empathy
• Humour. Use your sense of humour without putting the young person down.
• Optimism
• Honest reactions. If there is sufficient safety and trust between you, your genuine, honest reaction can also work, but you need to feel confident they won’t feel put down.
• Advice giving, but only when phased as a suggestion “you may want to…” this gives young people the option to consider.

Approaches to interventions that usually work

• Having clear goals
• Reinforcing and modelling positive behaviours
• Collaborative problem solving
• Challenging the statements or actions from the young person and not the young person “I don’t like what you are doing” rather than “I don’t like who you are”.
• Consistency (as yourself and with colleagues), respond in the same way to the same problem, respond the same way to everyone.

Avoiding escalation

If a young person presents with a problem or is challenging, listen. Always listen before reacting. Take a pause and then acknowledge their emotions or summarise what they have told you.

ake another pause, and then state what you want to happen or ask the young person if they can suggest a way forward “So, how can we resolves this?”. If what you want to happen has consequences if it doesn’t make these clear and make sure they are followed through.

If the young person is still upset, angry or agitated at that point consider taking a break before repeating the cycle. Have a cooling off period, let go and agree to differ or come back to it another time.

Repeat until the young person has calmed down and is willing to work together to solve the problem.

If it feels like they’re being oppressive, and all else fails, it may be fine to take a firm line and let them know their behaviour is unacceptable. If you do use your opinion, it might be better to “make your point” and then leave it, rather than defending it or trying to convince them it’s valid.

If at any time the young person becomes abusive state that you can not continue with the session but that you are willing to work together when you can both talk calmly. Do not be accommodating and understanding to unreasonable behaviour.

Manager’s responsibilities

Managers should be providing support and supervision for their teams. Consider;

• How invested is the professional?
• Ask what they felt they did well?
• Ask what they feel could have been done differently?

The impact on a professional

Working with challenging behaviour can have a negative impact on a professional, and undermine their confidence in working with young people who present as challenging.

• Try not to be drawn past the point of the intervention being useful
• Recognise the need to ask another professional for support or to take over
• Recognise that you might not be right!

This factsheet should be read in conjunction the factsheet “Working with young people: Listening and communication”

This guidance should be read in conjunction with the Kent and Medway Safeguarding Procedures.