Taking Action

Yes.

So as Daniel has just mentioned, there's many interventions that can be used in the management of separation related problems.

And you could recommend all of them in every case.

As we've indicated in previous episodes, that might not be the most efficient way of doing things and is not really particularly sensitive to the client's needs either.

Another important factor is how those recommendations are actually implemented.

So superficially, the plans may seem relatively straightforward, but in our experience, and perhaps because a lot of the cases that we see at Lincoln have been to one or potentially more behaviourists beforehand, they can be tricky to implement reliably if you don't fully appreciate the myriad of the individual.

So as Daniel's just mentioned there, this is a plan that was devised for Drax as an individual.

And there are differences affecting every client which we have to adapt to accordingly.

This is often where the issues can start to arise.

So let's start by looking at our initial recommendations for Drax.

And I'll just give a quick overview first before we have a bit more of a chat about those.

So they consisted of diary keeping, which was monitoring baseline for possible discomfort alongside other things.

Developing a safe haven, techniques to communicate to Drax Becky and Craig's role as a sensitive carer.

avoiding triggers and that can be in relation to the separation the people and the dogs providing discriminative signals of safety and non-safety in relation to separation training and then structured departures but before we go into those with becky and craig i'll just hand back over to daniel he'll say a bit more about the additional process that we go through when we think about the possible ways we could help client and their pet

Yes.

So there's a few things that we think about when we're managing any case.

And the first line that we do so that we go through when we're starting to think about recommendations is, first of all, we've got to think about risks and make sure that everybody is safe.

And that actually has to be our first priority.

priority the second stage is to try and stabilize the situation and as Millie said you know things like the avoiding triggers are important at that stage and then there's the actual methods of resolution and usually when a client comes that's what they're really focused on and I'm sure Becky and Craig in your case that was what you really wanted to hear that first time And whilst we give you some of that information, we have to put, you know, those other steps in place, keeping people safe.

I don't know how you felt about that sort of.

Did you feel frustrated that there wasn't enough just sort of focusing on solving Drax's problem on that first consult or?

No, not at all, because I wasn't under the illusion that it was going to be something that was going to happen over the night.

I knew it would take work, and it was quite refreshing to actually not focus on the separation as a start.

It was more the...

the small achievable goals and new new skills that we learned and actually the separation the the staged approach the diaries that millie mentioned and that started that came after that so it wasn't frustrating it was actually probably quite the opposite yeah