Interested in evidence-based, humane reinforcement strategies? We’ve put together some commonly asked questions to give you more information about QBS and the training programs we offer.
Safety-Care® is a competency-based crisis prevention training program for professional staff who work with individuals who have the potential for dangerous behavior. It was developed and is provided by QBS LLC.
There are a number of ways that Safety-Care® differs from other behavioral safety or “crisis management” courses. These include:
The Safety-Care® core curriculum is presented in a least to most restrictive format designed to provide staff with skills for prevention, minimization, and management of dangerous or challenging behaviors. Each chapter provides practical, functional skills for use in just about any educational, human services, or medical setting.
Safety-Care® provides physical prevention, safety, and management procedures that are designed to be simple and safe. The physical prevention and safety skills include safe approach and contact strategies, physical redirection procedures, basic physical safety skills for safely avoiding contact, and releases from a variety of grabs (wrist grabs, clothing grabs, chokes, hair pulls, and bites).
Physical management (restraint) procedures are designed to be infrequent, safe, and practical. They include a 1-person and 2-person standing hold (including management options if the individual drops to the floor), two 2-person transports, and a chair hold.
Additional physical safety and physical management techniques (including procedures for management in vehicles, floor holds, and other specialized interventions) can be added to the course via optional Safety-Care® modules.
Yes. You can select which parts of the curriculum to train staff in (within certain limits). Also, there are additional modules that can be added to the Safety-Care® core curriculum to make it specifically suited to the needs of your staff and the individuals they serve.
Safety-Care® is appropriate for use in residential programs, schools, hospitals, day programs, group homes, foster care, clinics, mental health centers, rehabilitation programs, and other support settings where there is the potential for dangerous behavior.
Safety-Care® is not designed for law enforcement or adult correctional settings. (It is appropriate for any staff, including Security, in a healthcare, education, forensic, or human services setting.).
The core Safety-Care® course is two days in length (12–16 hours of training time, depending on the size of the class and experience of the trainers). Trainer training in the core curriculum is three days. Additional modules require more time. An abbreviated version of the course may be shorter.
Yes. There is a trainer training version of the course that includes the full curriculum, plus extensive material on instruction methods, practice in training, and additional written testing to ensure competency.
Because of the intensive, competency-based nature of the course, no more than 14 staff may be taught by a single trainer per class. Two trainers can train up to 28 trainees. No larger class sizes are recommended.
A certified Safety-Care® trainer can train staff who work for his or her organization. Trainers may not train others (staff who work for other organizations, family members of persons served, independent consultants, etc.) without prior written approval from QBS. If you have any questions about who may or may not be trained, please contact us.
An optional specialized module, Safety Care for Families, is available for certified trainers to provide crisis prevention training directly to families and others who provide support in home or home-like settings.
Trainees receive a training manual and QBS provides an electronic certificate for each person who passes the course (Safety-Care® Specialists). Certified trainers also receive a certificate and access to electronic copies of training documents.
The Trainer course includes a copy of the Trainer’s Manual and electronic copies of all necessary documents. Trainers may make as many copies of training documents (including the Trainee Manual) as needed for training. There is a modest fee for replacement of a Trainer manual.
Yes. When training is provided by trainers who work directly for your organization, there is a small administrative fee to cover certification of trainees. That fee applies to each initial training and annual recertification.
Certification lasts for one year for both Trainer and Specialist certification. Specialist recertification of the core curriculum takes half the time of an initial class (usually about one day). Trainer recertification is a one-day class. If recertifying during an initial trainer training, the recertifying trainer will need to attend the first 2 days of the initial training. If a trainer or specialist is certfied in additional modules, those also require annual recertification.
Safety-Care® provides training in a wide range of skills that are critically important for safe, supportive, and humane interactions with individuals who may exhibit behavior that is dangerous to self or others. Staff who don’t remember what to do or use skills incorrectly can put themselves, other staff, and the individuals they support at serious risk. While some Safety-Care® procedures may be used frequently, no one uses all of the Safety-Care® skills often enough to maintain competence indefinitely. For these reasons, we require an annual retraining and competency check to make sure that both trainers and specialists maintain their skills so they can be used correctly when needed.
Anyone can participate in the non-physical portion of the course. To complete all of the physical skills, the requirements are:
These requirements should be reviewed and discussed with anyone who will be expected to complete the full Trainer or Specialist courses. It is possible to be certified in the overall course while having restrictions on specific physical procedures that a trainee was not able to safely demonstrate. A Specialist with a restriction is not trained or certified to use that procedure, while a Trainer with a restriction is also not able to teach that procedure.
If your staff will be trained as Safety-Care® Trainers, we recommend that you put careful thought into deciding who will participate. Optimal participants in the Trainer class are:
Yes. There is no behavioral safety course that has a stronger base of research evidence than Safety-Care®. The procedures used are based on a large number of scientific studies in the field of Applied Behavior Analysis published in peer-reviewed journals indicating the effectiveness of the selected procedures for treating problematic and dangerous behavior. A bibliography is included in the trainer manual.
With respect to research specifically about Safety-Care®, a pediatric hospital published a study of their restraint reduction program and found that, following implementation of Safety-Care®, there were clear reductions in injuries, use of restraint,and worker’s compensation costs.
Reference:
Paccione-Dyszelwski, Margaret R., et al. (2012). A Crisis Management Quality Improvement Initiative in a Children’s Psychiatric Hospital: Design, Implementation, and Outcome. Journal of Psychiatric Practice, 18, 304–311.
QBS is committed to supporting the appropriate and effective use of the Safety-Care® curriculum. After a training, QBS provides free chat, phone, and email support to Safety-Care® users. QBS also periodically sends email bulletins to Trainers, hosts video Q&A sessions, and posts videos with information for Safety-Care® users.
Yes. Upon reasonable request, QBS will testify on behalf of a client in legal or regulatory proceedings in which the client becomes involved, provided 1) such testimony shall be limited to a general description of Safety-Care®, Safety-Care® training methods, Safety-Care® compliance standards, and other general characteristics of Safety-Care® and its content; 2) QBS is provided sufficient notice to be available; 3) the client will pay consulting fees consistent with the then-applicable QBS daily consulting rate for each day (or any part thereof) of in-person testimony and reasonable out-of-pocket expenses incurred in connection with such testimony, including the cost of travel. QBS, however, will not provide testimony on behalf of a client if QBS is also a party to the same legal or regulatory proceeding or its activities are, independently, the subject of the same legal or regulatory proceeding.
Thanks for your interest in Safety-Care®. Here are some ways to get more information:
We’d love to hear from you and would be happy to answer any additional questions.
You don’t have to solve behavioral safety alone.
Safety-Care® provides evidence-based, prevention-first training that helps teams reduce escalation, minimize reliance on restrictive interventions, and improve safety for everyone involved.
Use this consultation to talk through your setting, your challenges, what effective, least-restrictive prevention can look like for your organization, along with practical next steps tailored to your environment.
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