Life Space Crisis Intervention

Exhibited by:

• Sarah Maiolo
• Caroline Tejeda

PLO attended:

• Life Space Crisis Intervention

Coached by:

• Denise Schira

PLO LEARNINGS:

Life Space Crisis Intervention (LSCI) is a verbal strategy that helps adults work with children and youth to build a trusting relationship in order to lead to real changes in overcoming self-defeating patterns and learning to make better choices to be successful in school. Traumatic experiences are stored in the limbic system of the brain, where there is no language, so LSCI works to brings language to emotion in order to interrupt repetitive trauma and crisis reenactment patterns.

IMPLEMENTATION OF TECHNIQUES & PRACTICES:

Understanding the Conflict Cycle is the first line of defense against reinforcing a student’s irrational thoughts and self-fulfilling prophecies. We learn in LSCI that there are six Reclaiming Interventions which are: Reality Rub (errors in perceptions), Red Flag (displacement of feelings), New Tools (poor social skills), Symptom Estrangement (justifying harmful behavior), Massaging Numb Values (behavior driven by guilt), and Manipulating Body Boundaries (exploitation of peers). A trained adult in LSCI takes the student through six stages to help the student in crisis. The six stages are: Drain Off (de-escalate the student), Timeline (determine what happened from the student’s perspective), Central Issue (adult determines which Reclaiming Intervention the student in presenting), Insight (help the student learn about their specific pattern of self-defeating behavior for personal growth), New Skills (teach the student a new social skill), and Transfer of Learning (help the student re-enter the classroom and share the plan with staff to reinforce the plan). The first three stages are Diagnostic stages, and the last three are Reclaiming stages.

IMPACT and DATA:

A major component of LSCI is understanding the Conflict Cycle. In the Conflict Cycle stressful events lead to student’s feelings, which in turn lead to student’s observable behavior, and then to adult/ peer reactions.

Research shows that Life Space Crisis Intervention helps adults manage challenging behaviors more effectively and therefore reducing small occurrences turning into large crises.

NEXT STEPS:

Training in Life Space Crisis Intervention benefits both students and staff. When adults know how to break the conflict cycle and de-escalate students, everyone wins. An overall goal is to increase the number of staff trained in order to decrease the number of punitive disciplinary actions. This will create a supportive and positive school climate, conducive to learning.