All staff at the City of Birmingham School are Team Teach trained. Team Teach provides staff with positive behaviour management training, equipping individuals and teams to deal with challenging situations and behaviours in ways that lead to desirable outcomes and positive relationships.

The positive behaviour management strategies that Team Teach develops and promotes emphasise team building, personal safety, communication, and verbal and non-verbal de-escalation techniques for dealing with challenging behaviour which reduce the need for physical intervention. As a last resort, we also teach positive handling techniques to resolve conflicts in ways that are safe, and which provide opportunities for repair and reflection for everyone involved.

Staff develop acceptable and authorised responses to disruptive, disturbing, angry and aggressive behaviours in a manner that maintains positive relationships and provides safety for all, helping reduce the number of serious incidents involving physical controls, and raising the awareness of the importance of recording, reporting, monitoring and evaluating all incidents involving positive handling.

We see positive handling as just one part of a whole-setting approach to behaviour management. As such, our framework is entirely compatible with Positive Behavioural Support (PBS) approaches for people with learning disabilities.

Our team of Team Teach instructors are licensed to deliver Level 1 (6 hour) and Level 2 (12 hours) courses. During the academic year, as well as training staff within our school, our instructors deliver courses to other Birmingham schools. These courses offer bespoke de-escalation and positive handling training with an emphasis on promoting and protecting positive relationships. We cover the legal framework, personal safety, understanding aggression, a range of verbal and non-verbal de-escalation strategies alongside some positive handling techniques and subsequent recording, reporting and reviewing processes.