In conversation with Robin Williams and Robert de Niro

Please Note: All the names and places mentioned in Lucy's blog have been changed to protect the identities of those involved.

I don’t know how your mind works, but mine sometimes spontaneously conjures up an image from a film and this image just sits there until it passes. I don’t know if this is just a reflection of how I’m feeling at the time, or a message of something from the great collective unconscious to my rather befuddled, often bewildered conscious self.

Last week I had the film “Awakenings” on my mind - all week. Based on a true story, Robin Williams is Oliver Sacks who trials a drug to see if it can reverse the long term comatose state that a group of patients are in, following an outbreak of a condition called ‘encepilitis lethargica’. The patients are led by Robert de Niro. The drug does and life resumes. It flowers magnificently and then… the drug stops working, patients are returned to their comatose state.

I am one of a handful of people across the country working full time promoting the use of intensive interaction. Don’t tell anyone but it’s actually relatively easy to get results. The techniques of intensive interaction work, follow them you will get results. However conversely stop following them and you will stop getting results.

What’s the problem? Lets all just use these techniques then, agreed?! Agreed. But in practice it’s not quite that simple. Peter Coia calls sustaining the use of intensive interaction, “the 3 bubbles”. 2 colleagues and I presented at this years intensive interaction national conference and made reference to this.

Direct use of intensive interaction is sustained by the individual member of staff (the inner bubble - training and post training input for the individual),a conducive local environment (middle bubble – is the right time and place provided for intensive interaction to be practiced), which in turn is sustained by a conducive organisational environment (outer bubble – are the right policies in place to support this practice within the organisation). For each level to exist the next one needs to support it. All 3 need to be aligned or the practice is vulnerable to breaking down further down the line.

Last week I had a meeting with one of our directors from the learning disability department to feedback about the intensive interaction project. I set aside some time to prepare for this meeting. Robin Williams and Robert de Niro both appeared.

‘By all means show the clips’, they said (clips are video footage showing indisputably the positive impact that using intensive interaction has). ‘These show you know what you need to do, but do you know what this director needs to be doing. That’s what you need to be telling her. Cut the fluffiness, get SMART - specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, timely.’ Good point Robin and Robert, I’ll get back to you. I’m still at the getting specific point, but it’s now at the top of my “To Do” list because if this isn’t addressed all work achieved in the last years is vulnerable to evaporating. In the meantime we made a good start. Present a case study at the next service managers meetings to promote discussion.

Anyone else out there got a message for me?