Today we were fortunate to have two guest speakers (Rob & Sean) from Learning Services in Raleigh & Durham, who came to talk to us about Traumatic Brain Injury clients at their residential facilities. During their presentation, the topic of Autism came up, and we discussed our experiences with different rehabilitative approaches to interacting with this type of patient. Sean mentioned a story about a man he had met named Mandt, who had an autistic child. Mandt was disappointed about the overly physical way the health care staff handled his child, and therefore decided to develop a new method of handling developmentally disabled children.
During my research I discovered the system that Mandt developed, called "The Mandt System" which describes his vision of "working with human service organizations to decrease workplace violence by increasing safety through use of positive behavior support". Mandt's program is designed to be used in multiple fields beyond health care, such as education, juvenile justice and mental health. His universal goal is "building healthy positive relationships" and his philosophy of "putting people first" and "supporting people, not just their behaviors" seems to be a direct reflection of his earliest health care experiences with his autistic son and directly indicates his motivations.
The Mandt System's focus is on staff development and it offers competency training, professional consultations and interactive teaching techniques through a certification program.
More information can be found at: www.mandtsystem.com
I love the Mandt system. I think it can be a great reminder of how to treat our clients. I think about how after years of clinical experience, the Mandt system can be a great tool in reminding us how to treat clients and really each other!! I love the idea of basically stopping behavior before it happens by knowing your clients. I try to use this with my children and even my husband. Although on a different level, I know what my husbands triggers are. I avoid useless arguments, by knowing when is a good time to "discuss" and when discussion is out of the question. Great topic!!
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