Intensive Interaction Pilot Project at Voyage Care: Blog 1

“These results brought tears to my eyes and a warm satisfaction” – Quote from a mother of a person supported

A few months ago, Kate Parker (‘Intensive Interaction Lead’ for Voyage Care) shared an extensive and detailed report with me about an Intensive Interaction pilot project which began in 2022. Below, I have tried to summarise some interesting aspects of it to share in this Blog:

Blog 1: The initial format and some reflective changes made to the Project:

The initial aim of this project was to introduce Intensive Interaction into the support of one person in the service’s care. The project also included embedding practice leadership in the form of an Intensive Interaction Champion in each service, and using video to coach staff and tailor training more precisely to the team.

However, the scope of the project expanded due to demand, leading to a broader range of positive outcomes than initially anticipated, including: better methodology for introducing Intensive Interaction into daily support, Quality of Life gains for the people supported, improved training materials, and positive feedback from families and staff. An additional outcome was the creation of a role for a lead in disseminating Intensive Interaction practice!

The Intensive Interaction Lead (Kate, an Intensive Interaction Coordinator) introduced Intensive Interaction to the service using the methodology modelled on best practice taken from the Intensive Interaction Institute’s Co-ordinator training. This report sets out some ‘learning’ to further improve the spread of Intensive Interaction to the people who would benefit from this approach.

Firstly, the results of the 1st phase of the project, focused on one service user:

Overall, having the Intensive Interaction Lead personally coach each staff member by observing their interactions, filming them and then supporting them to reflect on the footage worked well. This gave assurance that staff were using the correct skills and gave staff confidence in their practice.

Other benefits of the pilot project included:

• Benefits for the person supported – more engagement with staff, more engagement with peers, improved sleep.
• Positive feedback from the person’s family.
• Positive feedback from the local authority, with a reviewing social worker giving positive feedback about the use of Intensive Interaction.
• Positive feedback from the staff who attended the training.

Staff fed back from the training that:

• Their knowledge and confidence in Intensive Interaction increased, and they also felt more confident in providing support due to learning safe and appropriate ways to include touch.
• They were interested in the training content, finding it relatable and relevant to their role, with the outcomes seen on the videos inspiring them.
• Numerous staff stated that they especially valued the video of Intensive Interaction being used with the specific person they supported.
• The person nominated as Intensive Interaction Champion quickly learned the skills and provided a good example, making the practice ‘business as usual’.
• The support staff quickly adopted Intensive Interaction and were skilled in using it.

However, some things did not work so well. Staff shared feedback for the improvement of the training sessions, which included: Some videos being too long; there being too much background noise on some videos; a need for more time to ask questions; and the need for biscuits!

Also:

• Only 1 staff member engaged in the completion of the trainee ‘workbook’.
• The first Champion was a team leader with responsibility over several services. The breadth of their role made it difficult for them to coach staff and gather video to support staff reflection. Also, the Champion then left!
• Having the Intensive Interaction Lead personally coach each staff member would not be practical when rolling out Intensive Interaction further due to capacity issues.

So, some changes were made to the training sessions:

• Breaking up longer pieces of video footage with explanations, discussion, and more time for questions.
• Switching off TV/radio before recording footage (where reasonable).
• The use of the ‘workbook’ for staff was stopped; staff felt overly burdened by more paperwork. However, elements of the workbook have been used in coaching future Intensive Interaction Champions.
• The provision of biscuits.

The 2nd phase of the Project:

During the project, the Intensive Interaction Lead was approached to provide Intensive Interaction input into services in other parts of the country. The requests were due to the evidence base for Intensive Interaction as a way to improve ‘quality of life’ and the emerging evidence for using Intensive Interaction as a proactive strategy for minimising the risk of Behaviours of Concern (BoC).

The additional work was welcomed as an opportunity to trial a different way to introduce Intensive Interaction into people’s support at sites remote from the Intensive Interaction Lead’s location. In this new phase, there was a greater emphasis on developing practice leadership within each service. The Intensive Interaction Champions were given an additional one or two days of 1:1 or small group coaching, as well as attending the bespoke half-day training with the rest of the team.

During the period working with each service, the Intensive Interaction Lead and Intensive Interaction Champions collaborated to gather footage of Intensive Interaction being used with the people supported – this was only done where a decision had been made that it was in the Best Interests of the service user for them to be filmed in order to incorporate Intensive Interaction into their support. The Intensive Interaction Lead edited and captioned videos to demonstrate and name best practice techniques. This footage was incorporated into a bespoke half-day training session delivered to the staff team as a whole. This edited video was not only used in staff training, but also used by the Champions as a coaching tool for future staff.

Where staff gave consent, their Intensive Interaction practice was videoed by the Intensive Interaction Champions, and the Champions gave their colleagues constructive feedback on this. The aim of these follow-up sessions was for this video to be shared with the Intensive Interaction Lead for additional feedback and to check that the process of disseminating Intensive Interaction was working.

In this second phase of the pilot, some more changes were made:

• Consideration was given to the capacity of any proposed Intensive Interaction Champion, and this was discussed with them and their manager.
• Champions identified in the second phase of the pilot were not always in a management role. Sometimes a support worker displaying the confidence, values, and influence within a team was able to act as the Intensive Interaction Champion.
• In some services more than one Champion was identified and coached to reduce workload and ensure there would still be practice leadership – even if one left.
• In the later phase of the pilot, the Champions were given more coaching to enable them to do the filming and reflection themselves with support worker colleagues.
• Follow-up meetings over Teams were set up, and the Champion was asked to share footage of staff using Intensive Interaction skills. The aim was to get assurance that the skills were being correctly used, and that the training and coaching were effective.

This Blog 1 has now been followed up by a second Blog (titled ‘Blog 2’) reporting on ‘the outcomes’ found as a result of this Intensive Interaction project. Follow this link to read Blog2: https://connectingwithintensiveinteraction.com/2025/08/22/intensive-interaction-pilot-project-at-voyage-care-blog-2-the-outcomes/.

If anyone working with, or wishing to lead on, Intensive Interaction across a similar service wants to contact Kate directly, e.g. to gain more detail on her Intensive Interaction Lead role and experiences, you can contact her at: KateParker@voyagecare.com