An ideal Intensive Interaction service?

I was recently contacted by a member of our Intensive Interaction community and asked what an 'ideal Intensive Interaction service' would look like. Well, I think its a good but quite complicated issue to address and succinctly answer. 

I think it is complicated because Intensive Interaction is now used across so many different working and care contexts, with children and adults with differing levels of learning disability, with children and adults with autism, sometimes with people with multi-sensory impairments, sometimes with people whose behaviour severely challenges us and our services in how best to respond; now also increasingly with older adults with late stage dementia.

So I ask myself: is there a single and hopefully relatively simple description of such an 'ideal Intensive Interaction service' that can help define and thus deliver best Intensive Interaction practices across all such diverse care, support and/or educational environments?

Well, I have had a go, and below I set out what I think would be the general characteristics of an 'ideal Intensive Interaction service' that, if achieved or enacted, would create a service that would deliver the most effective Intensive Interaction we could wish for. These are:

• Regular and flexible Intensive Interaction sessions (both timetabled and opportunistic) are offered to the learner/service user (as evidenced in some format of routine recordings).

• Learner/service user engagement in Intensive Interaction is routinely recorded, with details of novel interactive occurrences also routinely recorded, and such recordings made readily available for all staff to see/view.

• At least some Intensive Interaction sessions are routinely recorded (in a range of formats as the identified purpose demands) and staff regularly engage in a structured reflective process (including reflective video analysis) to develop genuinely ‘person-centred’ Intensive Interaction plans and practices.

• All significant staff are trained in and well informed of the Intensive Interaction rationale and practices (including during any initial induction training), with regular training updates or peer discussion and reflection sessions made available.

• There are active medium to longer term plans for continuous staff Intensive Interaction practice development, and all significant staff (i.e. those that directly practice Intensive Interaction) have access to regular peer supervision sessions with more experienced colleagues (or managers).

• The general working or care environment is deliberately arranged in a reflective and ‘person-centred’ way so as to enable Intensive Interaction to readily take place in the best possible way, at every available opportunity.

• All levels of service management are well informed of the Intensive Interaction rationale and practices (ideally there being an identifiable service level Intensive Interaction Coordinator), and take a visible role in the development and direct delivery of Intensive Interaction.

Then I think, is that enough; have I missed something? or is all this naively unachievable? 

Well, what do you think?