The Development and Implementation of Non-Violent Resistance in Child and Adolescent Residential Settings

Non-violent Resistance (NVR) is a method to manage child and adolescent aggressive behavior and to decrease parental helplessness. Although developed for a family setting, this paper describes the adaptation of NVR for child and adolescent residential settings, reports on the possible hampering and facilitating elements of implementing NVR in four different institutions and finally presents seclusion and restraint rates before and after implementation. Retrospective analysis of the different implementation processes suggested the following elements to facilitate implementation: awareness that NVR is not a quick fix, a considerable amount of time and financial investment, a team-wide perspective, support from all levels in an organization and influential team members committed to NVR to decrease the risk of falling back into more familiar patterns. Seclusion and restraint figures pre-post point in the direction that the implementation of an adapted version of NVR in residential settings could result in decreased seclusion and restraint. Furthermore, this decrease was most pronounced in sites with a successful implementation process. This observational study provides a starting point for an empirical basis for the use of NVR within child and adolescent residential settings. Further research on successful implementation processes for multi-level, milieu-based interventions, such as NVR, is required.