Positive Behaviour Ireland jobs

Job Title: Behavioural Support Specialist
Organisation: Disability Services - Genesis Healthcare Ireland
Location: Midlands and South East region
Reporting to: Head of Disability Services
Contract: Permanent, Full-Time

Company Overview and Role: Genesis Healthcare Ireland is committed to delivering high-quality, person-centred residential care for older persons and adults with intellectual disabilities. Our organisation is committed to providing compassionate, person-centred care that enables the people we support to live with dignity, choice and purpose. Our disability services are built on the household model - small, ordinary homes in ordinary communities, designed to universal design principles, where people are supported to live the life they choose rather than the life a building or a rota dictates

The Behavioural Support Specialist provides expert, evidence-based positive behaviour support to adults with intellectual disabilities, autism and complex support needs living in Genesis disability services across the Midlands and South East region.

The postholder leads functional behavioural assessment, the co-design and implementation of multi-element behaviour support plans, and the systematic reduction and elimination of restrictive practice. The role combines direct clinical work with a substantial capacity-building function: equipping Persons in Charge, Social Care Leaders and frontline teams with the knowledge, confidence and supervision they need to deliver good behaviour support consistently, every day, without a specialist in the room.

The post is also a service-development role. As Genesis opens new designated centres in the region, the postholder contributes behavioural expertise to pre-admission assessment, transition planning, environmental design and staffing determination, so that complexity of need is understood and properly resourced before a person moves in

This role carries significant responsibility for the wellbeing and experiences of vulnerable people.

Key Responsibilities

Assessment, formulation and behaviour support planning

• Conduct functional behavioural assessments and comprehensive behavioural assessments for residents whose support needs include behaviours of concern, using indirect, descriptive and, where appropriate and ethical, experimental methods.
• Develop clear, individualised, multi-element behaviour support plans addressing ecological, curricular, preventative, reactive and quality-of-life components, written in language the people implementing them can actually use.
• Ensure every plan is co-produced with the person, their family or advocate and their support team, and reflects the person’s will and preference in line with the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015, as amended.
• Establish objective outcome measures for each plan, monitor implementation fidelity, and review and revise plans at defined intervals and following any significant incident or change in presentation.
• Contribute behavioural expertise to individual assessment and personal planning under Regulation 5, and to health, communication, sensory and mental health formulations developed with MDT colleagues.

Restrictive practice reduction and human rights

• Lead the Genesis disability services programme for the review, reduction and, wherever possible, elimination of restrictive practice, in line with HIQA guidance and national quality improvement principles.
• Maintain oversight of the restrictive practice register in each designated centre, ensuring every restriction is identified, rights-assessed, time-limited, consented to or otherwise lawfully authorised, subject to a documented least-restrictive-alternative analysis, and reviewed at defined intervals.
• Chair or contribute to the local rights review process in each service, and provide the evidence base and data analysis required by it.
• Advise on the lawful and proportionate use of PRN psychotropic medication for behaviours of concern, working with prescribers, the Person in Charge and the MDT toward rational prescribing and, where clinically appropriate, reduction.
• Ensure a human rights based approach is embedded in practice, and that any restriction is demonstrably the least restrictive option available for the shortest necessary time.

Direct support to Persons in Charge and site teams

• Act as the first point of specialist advice for Persons in Charge on behaviours of concern, providing timely, practical and clearly documented recommendations.
• Attend site on a scheduled basis and respond to urgent requests for advice within agreed response times; participate in post-incident review and reflective debrief with teams.
• Support Persons in Charge in preparing behaviour support evidence for HIQA inspection, registration and renewal applications, and in responding to inspection findings and compliance plans.
• Provide practice supervision, coaching and modelling to Social Care Leaders, nurses, social care workers and healthcare assistants in the implementation of behaviour support plans.
• Advise on staffing configuration, skill mix, environmental design and household composition where these materially affect behavioural presentation or risk.

Multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary working

• Work as an active member of the Genesis Disability Services MDT, contributing behavioural formulation to shared assessment and planning and taking shared responsibility for outcomes.
• Build and maintain effective working relationships with external clinicians, HSE disability services, mental health of intellectual disability teams, primary care and Children’s Disability Network Teams, particularly where a young person is transitioning to adult residential services.
• Represent Genesis at case conferences, safeguarding meetings, funding reviews and commissioner discussions where behavioural expertise is required.

Education, training and workforce capability

• Design and deliver a rolling programme of behaviour support training for Genesis disability services staff, covering positive behaviour support principles, understanding behaviour as communication, trauma-informed practice, de-escalation, restrictive practice and human rights.
• Deliver plan-specific training so that every staff member implementing a behaviour support plan is competent and confident to do so, and record that competence.
• Provide training and practical support to families, advocates and, where appropriate, to external partners.

Safeguarding, risk and incident management

• Act at all times in accordance with national safeguarding policy and the Genesis safeguarding framework, reporting any concern regarding abuse, neglect or restrictive practice without delay.
• Contribute behavioural risk assessment to individual and centre-level risk registers, and to the identification of environmental, peer-compatibility and staffing risks.
• Analyse behavioural incident data across the region, identify patterns, trends and outliers, and bring these to the attention of the Head of Operations, Disability Services and the Clinical Governance, Risk and Compliance Lead.
• Support the accurate and timely completion of statutory notifications relating to behaviour, restraint and safeguarding.

Governance, quality and assurance

• Provide a quarterly behaviour support and restrictive practice assurance report to the Head of Operations, Disability Services, feeding the Genesis integrated KPI and governance assurance architecture.
• Define, collect and report agreed behaviour support key performance indicators, including restrictive practice counts and trajectory, plan review currency, implementation fidelity and staff training coverage.
• Contribute to policy development, procedural review and audit in the areas of behaviour support, restrictive practice, PRN psychotropic use and safeguarding.
• Participate in the annual review of the quality and safety of care and in provider-led six-monthly unannounced visits where behaviour support is in scope.

Qualifications:

Essential Knowledge & Experience

• Registered in the Intellectual Disability division of the register maintained by the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland, or entitled to be so registered. In exceptional circumstances, assessed case by case, registration in another division of the register may be accepted.
• A Level 8 or higher post-registration major academic award on the Quality and Qualifications Ireland framework, relevant to the specialist area of behaviour support.
• A recognised postgraduate qualification at Level 9 or above in applied behaviour analysis, clinical psychology or a closely related discipline, with eligibility for membership of the Psychological Society of Ireland or Board Certified Behaviour Analyst certification.

Or

• CORU registration in social care work, occupational therapy or speech and language therapy, together with a Level 9 or higher qualification relevant to positive behaviour support.
• A minimum of five years post-qualification experience in the disability, mental health or a related sector.
• A minimum of two years experience in the specialist area of supporting people who present with behaviours of concern.
• Demonstrable experience of conducting functional behavioural assessments and of developing and implementing multi-element behaviour support plans.

Key Relationships

• Persons in Charge (PICs)
• Clinical Nurse Managers
• Staff Teams
• Head Of Operations
• External Regulators (e.g., HIQA as required)

Job Type: Full-time

Pay: From €55,000.00 per year

Work Location: In person