D.ESCAL8™ is about relationships.

After nearly 2 decades of working in care as an employee, I saw a consistent theme of neglected relationships leading to distress, harm, and a loss of what care is supposed to be about. 

I saw time and time again:

• Staff whose use of control and authority disguised an unwillingness to feel uncomfortable.
• Heartbreaking overuse of physical intervention by staff not trained to see the people they support as people.
• Supported individuals starved of connection because their ways of communication weren't acceptable or understood.
• Teams unaware that building a relationship with the people they support was part of their job.

D.ESCAL8 was founded as a response to this moral sinkhole that services so often risk falling into.

Reframing Intervention

We started by addressing the need for physical intervention training to have a total reframe of its purpose.

Courses are often sold on their ability to "Control" and "Restrain", and leave out that the individual restrained is another human being. That's an attitude that leads to abuse of authority. The distance this creates between the carer and those they care for is what leads to ethical failures in services. 

When staff experience training like this, they come away having missed a fundamental fact: 

If we've reached the point where we need to restrain someone, we've already failed. 

For this reason, our physical interventions course is called "Supporting Individuals in Distress." For over a decade we've taught that the only appropriate physical intervention is one that supports the person safely, humanely, and when everything else has been tried and failed.

This principle is at the core of what D.ESCAL8™ is about. This has led to a large amount of feedback from participants, who say that we deliver the least restrictive training they have experienced.

Our courses and workshops are constantly under review and evolving to incorporate the latest best practices, research, and legislation. We're not dogmatic, and we continuously work to improve at what we do. 

How We're Evolving

Recently, we've taken our mission one step further.

To get this experience to more people, we now do not require you to use our PI training system. We deliver this impact to larger groups, whatever PI system you already use.

We now help staff teams to build the kinds of relationships that prevent the need for physical intervention in the first place.

Our Supporting in Green workshop gives entire staff teams the knowledge and confidence they need to be able to proactively build relationships with those they support.

Staff who've come away from our workshops demonstrate an open-minded attitude to the behaviours they see and support one another to be their best selves for the people who they care for.

In short, D.ESCAL8™ is about relationships - why they're often neglected, how to foster them, and why it's our duty to do so.

Des Cooke

Director, UKBA(cert), BCBA & MSc

Founder of D.ESCAL8™ 2013

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY

September 2018 to present -

UKBA(cert) & Board Certified Behaviour Analyst (BCBA)

• Positive Behaviour Support Consultant
• Psychological Flexibility Consultant

September 2013 to present - Director D.ESCAL8™

• Lead Trainer and Behaviour Consultant
• Responsible for all Company Operations

November 2011 to 2022 - West Wales Shared Lives 

• Shared Lives / Adult Placement Carer

September 1994 to July 2013 - Lead Trainer and Senior Behaviour Management Consultant for Studio III Training Systems.

• Lead Trainer