Focused Monitoring Report for Three Springs New Beginnings

[Hedge]

Found this from 2008:

Focused Monitoring Report
State Supported/Operated Programs

(Retrieved from http://http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=three%20springs%20new%20beginnings&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CDcQFjAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fdocs.alsde.edu%2Fdocuments%2F65%2FThree%2520Springs%2520New%2520Beginnings.pdf&ei=rKeMT7T4H8bq0QGO243yCQ&usg=AFQjCNEnDznCmDjBkqMZaqkhnS4AQ3nuqA)

The report appears to be focused on whether kids' educational needs are being met at Three Springs New Beginnings. I am completely unsurprised that the answer is no.

Of note from the report:  "Parents are involved in such activities as Family Support Day."

This leads me to believe that the facility staged some sort of visitation day during the period of the monitoring. (April 28-May 2, 2008)


"The staff maintains certification in the Satori Alternatives to Managing Aggression methods of managing behavior." Che, I remember that you mentioned this SAMA restraint method.


Here is a description of the training: http://http://www.satorilearning.com/index.php/SAMA_Description.html

History of SAMA: http://http://www.satorilearning.com/index.php/Our_History.html

This program has emerged through a number of transformations. The original program was designed and piloted at Rusk State Hospital in 1980 and was called "Foundations of Verbal and Physical Intervention," or FVPI. Rusk was the ideal site for developing the program because it served literally every client population in Texas, including children and adolescent, geriatric, people with acute and chronic mental illness, chemical dependency, mental retardation, and the criminally insane.

To see whether the program was achieving our goals of safety for our clients and staff members, I checked data on the number and severity of injuries to staff and those we served as well as the number of worker compensation claims filed related to aggressive behavior. The data showed that injury rates went down as more people were trained to use the program. Because of its positive results, on September 29, 1981, the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation adopted the program, and it became required training for all service staff as "Prevention and Management of Aggressive Behavior," or PMAB®.

This trend of fewer and less severe injuries from aggression continued, and in 1985 the Attorney General of Texas presented a special citation to me acknowledging the program's benefit to the citizens of Texas. That citation reads in part:

Mr. Larry Hampton of Rusk State Hospital has earned the Attorney General's Meritorious Safety Award by having met all necessary requirements.

Mr. Hampton was the principal author and training director of the Prevention and Management of Aggressive Behavior (PMAB®) Program, which was implemented within the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation (TDMHMR) system in 1980.

The program's primary intent was to minimize both client and employee injuries as well as reduce Worker's Compensation claims. During the last five years, this goal has been realized by achieving significant reductions for client and employee injury rates as well as Worker's Compensation claims.

From 1981 to 1985, while serving as Director of Special Programs at Rusk, I certified all Instructor Trainers for the TXMHMR. I had the responsibility of assuring the competency of these people, who in turn certified instructors at their state hospitals and state schools, but I had no authority to provide oversight or to remove those who did not present the program according to its principles and practices.

In 1985, I assumed the position of Supervisor of Training for the department at Central Office in Austin. Part of my job was to continue certifying Master Trainers formerly called Instructor Trainers. My supervisor and mentor was a person I had taught to be a Master Trainer in the second course I ever taught, and she gave me the assignment to redesign the program and replace the crude original videotapes with up-to-date ones and support them with a comprehensive Instructors Guide. The project was completed and then revised in 1991 as the 2nd edition of PMAB®, which became a registered name that year.

That was also the year I left state employment after 17 years to head Satori Learning Designs, Inc. I had envisioned designing new programs and leaving PMAB® behind. The state held the copyright to the materials I had developed and there was no reason for my further involvement. Then I started getting calls from people who had purchased the program and found that they could not get instruction from the state in how to implement it. Somewhat reluctantly I agreed to instruct people from private and public agencies to use the materials properly and, as important, to understand the meaning of the principles that were its bedrock.

In 1999, the state revised the materials without my official input and took a heavier institutional focus. They also made the materials more instructor intensive and continued to teach elements that I considered outdated. The new materials were understandably focused on the needs of the department and not the needs for risk management of aggressive behavior of the community at large.

Satori Alternatives to Managing Aggression is the response to the needs left unmet. Facilitators and the groups using SAMA are the beneficiaries of the years of development and refinement of what began in 1980 and has been validated by the state of Texas and by facilities throughout the United States and overseas.

When I designed the original PMAB® program it was something I couldn't not do. I saw well-intentioned staff members who were miserable. They were afraid of the people they were supposed to serve. They did not have the tools necessary to keep themselves or their charges safe from the effects of aggression. Now, after all these years, I find I can't not provide the SAMA program to a broader audience, for the same reasons. My hope is that the program's benefits of peace and safety will reach even farther than its predecessor.

[Che Gookin]

Yeah, I remember SAMA fairly well. I used it.. well I sort of used it... far too many times.

It was an overly convoluted system prone to going rapidly wrong due to the fact that it required too many movements on the part of the people performing it. So many movements that it was difficult to remember them all as SAMA certs were every six months or more, which involved a quick morning or afternoon long touch up.

Most of us goons at 3 springs quickly transitioned from SAMA to WWE style moves in a few weeks.

[mbnh31782]

I can vouch for SAMA being used.  I witnessed way too many kids being restrained using this method though they were pushing to not have us restrain any of the kids.