Researcher's autism work gets national platform
A Sunderland graduate will be putting her university work into best practice when she takes up a new national role supporting a programme designed to reduce physical intervention when caring for people with autism and learning disabilities.
Lisa Alcorn has more than 23 years experience working in autism and is leaving her current post as Head of Practice and Development at the North East Autism Society to join national social care services charity Creative Support.
There she will be developing a practical framework for the UK's health and social care industry in the use of Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) and the minimisation of restrictive practices, in response to new guidance set out by the Department of Health, in the wake of the Winterbourne View Care Home scandal in 2011.
Lisa believes the strategies she's developing while studying her Professional Doctorate at the University of Sunderland will bridge the gap between new guidance and putting PBS theories into practice.
As the mum-of-two, from Sunderland, has progressed through her career from volunteering in residential accommodation for adults with autism, to taking a lead role in delivering training and best practice in the region, she has been a continual advocate of PBS, recently winning an International Leadership Awards for Innovative Practice in this area.
Many traditional methods of managing or changing challenging behaviour have been forms of punishment and coercion, but PBS is a modern approach encompassing strategies and methods that aim to assist a person to reduce challenging behaviour and increase their quality of life through teaching them new skills and adjusting their environment to promote positive behaviour changes.
Lisa said: "My new role in the voluntary sector at Creative Support will be about looking at the Department of Health's national guidelines, interpreting them and putting them into a practical framework for those working in health and social care. There's a gap between the theory and practice and I know how to fill that gap as a result of the work I'm doing in my Professional Doctorate at Sunderland.
"PBS is an approach I've adopted throughout my career when others considered it barmy, but it's a commonsense approach that reduces the need for restrictive, physical interventions, and minimising the chance of abuse occurring in the future, in cases such as Winterbourne.
"We need to improve the understanding of those working in the sector, as well as the service users' quality of life and delivering training frameworks around this."
She added: "I have always wanted PBS to be seen as the national model in social care services and it's now happening. However, if it isn't led and managed properly it could fail, so strong leadership is needed, managers and leaders need to know what that looks like, hence the purpose of Professional Doctorate."
The Professional Doctorate qualification, introduced by the University of Sunderland in 2007, enables professionals to base their studies on practical projects in their workplace and is the same level of qualification as a PhD. The qualification allows a professional to investigate contemporary issues facing their sector and make a contribution to professional knowledge that is applied and practical in nature.
Lisa started working in residential accommodation for adults with autism and progressed to the role of Registered Manager. After gaining qualifications at the University of Sunderland including an undergraduate degree and a Masters in Applied Management, graduating in 2010, she moved to another voluntary sector organisation and became a Regional Service Manager overseeing the re-provision of people with autism from long stay hospitals throughout the North East and North Yorkshire area.
She then took a lead role on Practice Development so that the delivery of training at the North East Autism Society is current and best practice.
Lisa credits the University for supporting her career progression and giving her the confidence to take on her new national role.
She said: "I never thought I was clever enough to go to university, but once I began my course, I just got the bug. The great thing about Sunderland's lecturers is they are all work-based practitioners themselves and I could easily relate to what they were teaching and talking about. It's certainly broadened my scope.
"I was able to look at the theory relate it to and apply it to my own work, I then began to come up with my own theories, applying them to see what happened. All of a sudden things started to work and in meetings my ability and performance improved."
Catherine Hayes, Senior Lecturer in Health in the Department of Pharmacy, Health and Well-being, at the University of Sunderland,said: "Lisa's work has an impact at the very front level of patient and client care and goes beyond looking at the research purely from an academic perspective, it looks at it from lots of different angles from managerial and clinical, to the front line of families and their carers. But what really strikes us is how much Lisa really cares for the essence of the people that she is responsible for.
"Lisa's work also demonstrates the value of the Professional Doctorate, it's a very different route to a PhD, as it encourages people to use the work they have already carried out in practice and look at how that can be translated theoretically, to something of relevance in client-led care."
Provided by University of Sunderland
