Aggression Management For The People Who Work With People In Crisis
Comprehensive Aggression Response Education. Ethical, evidence-based training for behavioral health, social services, juvenile services, healthcare, and corrections.
The SPEAR System®, Reimagined Through a Trauma-Informed Lens
For decades we have designed programs to help professionals within a vast spectrum of human services manage fear, improve their de-escalation strategies, and, if required, protect themselves with natural and instinctive movement.
SPEAR CARE® is built on the very same sciences of physiology, kinesiology, and psychology that made the SPEAR System® one of the most trusted and effective personal defense systems in the world, revised and specifically adapted to support the requirements of crisis de-escalation and crisis intervention.
The program was re-imagined to make the providers safer so they can deliver their services more safely and more efficiently.
Most Staff Assaults Happen Before Anyone Is Ready
Most adverse events in care and services systems occur during an ambush moment where the employee was not in a state of readiness to weather the ambush.
KNOW FEAR® and SPEAR CARE® prioritize that moment, enabling the employee to regain and engage in functional thinking more quickly and make appropriate safety decisions.
Our training starts much earlier in the incident.
SPEAR CARE® Is Not Simply Another Restraint Or Physical-Control Program
We teach staff to recognize behavioral and physiological changes, manage their own fear and stress response, improve communication and crisis-intervention skills, and use trauma-informed strategies to defuse situations before they become physical.
When physical intervention becomes unavoidable, we address the critical transition from verbal intervention to personal protection and appropriate physical action. The SPEAR System® is built around the body's natural survival response and uses gross-motor protective movements designed to protect both staff and the individual in crisis while creating opportunities to regain control of the situation.
The Person Presenting Aggression May Also Be Frightened
The person presenting aggression may also be frightened, traumatized, dysregulated, or overwhelmed. Staff need skills for recognizing that while simultaneously remaining regulated themselves and maintaining their own safety.
Coercive tactics are antithetical to the dynamics of trust and rapport, essential to the provider and person-served relationship.
It Works With The Procedures You Already Have
We want to understand what your organization currently uses and what your organizational and regulatory requirements are.
In many cases, SPEAR CARE® can integrate with an organization's mandated escort and restraint procedures rather than simply replacing one collection of techniques with another.
We fully appreciate that the regulatory guidelines of physical intervention in custody and in care and services are distinct and can be vastly different from use-of-force policies or rules of engagement.
- While our training courses include physical skills and leverage elements of psychology, kinesiology, and neuroscience, none of the skills initiate manual restraint or physical contact.
- They do, however, reduce reaction time, enabling staff to temporarily control and manage active assault for as long as the person-served is committed to assaulting a staff member.
- If the person-served doesn't initiate assault, no contact occurs, allowing staff to prioritize de-escalation.
- If the person-served becomes assaultive and then discontinues assault when met with SPEAR, de-escalation options can re-emerge, pursuant to policy and pursued if desired.
- Our proprietary learning models teach professionals to detect, defuse, or defend against the threat or risk of violence.
Two Days. Four Phases.
A progression toward greater confidence, presence, awareness, and skill in de-escalation.
KNOW FEAR®
Participants engage our proprietary approach to managing fear. By changing how one encodes and processes fear, one can change their ability to self-regulate and constructively influence the behavior of others. Covers the neural circuitry of fear, a simple system to identify psychological fear and confront it before it consumes the mind, how to rid yourself of doubt and hesitation, the science of fear and how it impacts decision-making, and the four steps to managing fear.
Essentials of Personal Safety
Develops situational awareness to help detect and de-escalate confrontations with people-served. Focuses on the assessment of verbal and physical cues presented at different stages of interpersonal interaction, and on managing staff response to lower the chances of escalation. Includes the D1 Detect and Avoid, D2 Defuse and De-escalate, D3 Defend framework, our Choice Speech formula, the Non-Violent Posture System, and SPEAR startle-flinch conversion — the body's natural response to sudden danger, what we call the biological air-bag.
The BTS Human Protection System
Our holistic method of confrontation management, which reduces the risk of injury to both the staff member and the person-served if a situation escalates into a physical confrontation. Covers the connections between physiology, biomechanics, and psychology, the practical and effective use of gross-motor movements for personal defense, dynamic startle-flinch conversion drills, emotional climatization drills, and scenarios designed specifically to address the needs of staff.
Psychologically Sound Scenario Training
We reverse-engineer scenarios, then Socratically engage the students so they understand how to solve a conflict. This enhances the safety of both the person-served and the staff. Our approach is not just evidence-based, but also ethically based.
Upon Completion, Graduates Will Be Able To
- Assess their surroundings for potential hazards and position themselves more safely in relation to people-served and individuals outside of the scope of their care
- Maximize safety and enable a trauma-informed environment for all present
- Understand how to manage fear and circumvent personal trigger states that can result in non-therapeutic responses
- Recognize physical signals indicating escalating aggression that present across neurotypes and psychological conditions
- Implement verbal and psychomotor methods of aggression de-escalation
- Demonstrate physical strategies that help intercept violent behavior based on instinctive, gross-motor movement that can be deployed regardless of physicality and athleticism
- Debrief with their team after the occurrence of aggression to more effectively provide care and create procedures for successful outcomes
Three Levels
SPEAR CARE® Provider
Two days. Fundamentals for staff and personnel.
SPEAR CARE® Field Trainer
Four days. Can run sustainment training. Internal use only, no commercial application.
SPEAR CARE® Certified Instructor
Five days. Can teach Providers within the organization.
Course length flexes with the experience level of the group. Custom programs are available, and we deliver virtually via Zoom and Microsoft Teams.
Why It's Built This Way
Over the last 45+ years, our body of work has predominantly served public safety, law enforcement, and the armed forces.
We recognize that some of the language and tactics from those domains are inappropriate for the care and services domain. The SPEAR CARE® program reflects the necessary revisions for our system to be aligned with health and human services.
SPEAR CARE® is grounded in 45+ years of research into fear and aggression, and is based on the sciences of neurobiology, kinesiology, and psychology, which makes it easy to learn and apply.
The physical skills within our training are designed to mitigate force presented by a person in crisis, rather than apply it. SPEAR CARE® is the safest and easiest to learn and align with any professional de-escalation program.
Because our program is built around natural movement and human behavior, it is all-inclusive regardless of gender, role, or experience. This means anyone from your organization can learn it quickly.
This reduces the risk of harm from occurring to both providers and people-served, which enhances therapeutic engagement and preserves relationships, all without the use of restraints. It also enhances resiliency, which reduces attrition.
McDonnell AA, O'Shea MC, Bews-Pugh SJ, McAulliffe H, Deveau R (2023). Staff training in physical interventions: a literature review. Frontiers in Psychiatry 14:1129039.
Our Program Reduces Risk At Four Levels
- It reduces the risk to the team and staff.
- It reduces the risk to the person-served.
- It reduces the risk to the organization and its leadership.
- It reduces the risk to the community.
An independent five-year study by Dorset Police recorded a 41% reduction in head trauma during assaults, a 45% increase in arm trauma — the arms doing their job instead of the head — and a 29% reduction in use-of-force complaints, from six hours of SPEAR System® training a year.
In The Field
SPEAR CARE® is delivered to state and nonprofit care agencies across child welfare, juvenile rehabilitation, behavioral health, secure treatment, and corrections.
Partner organizations certify their own instructor teams and sustain the training internally, supported by an instructor development and fidelity program that keeps them current, consistent, and aligned with BTS standards.
Where Do Your People Work?
SPEAR CARE® + JUMPSTART Mastery
We're proud to partner with JUMPSTART Mastery and their VerbalCraft/ACIT programs, among the world's leading crisis intervention and de-escalation education resources. Together we offer integrated training that prepares care and services teams for the realities of crisis de-escalation.
“The blend of a practical situational awareness system with verbal and non-verbal de-escalation strategies will help your staff navigate fear and risk during challenging times. We look forward to helping you and your team.”
Our training is realistic, relevant, and responsible. What we teach is legally, morally, and ethically sound — our language, our documents, our drills — which is a necessary part of the equation in our litigious world.
When the provider is at risk, either emotionally or physically, they cannot lean into the art and science of de-escalation.
We cannot hope to change lives when our providers are at risk.
SPEAR CARE® is the next evolution of our care system's workforce training needs in personal safety.
We look forward to helping you and your team.
Tony Blauer
Founder, SPEAR CARE®
Blauer Tactical Systems
Tell Us What Your People Are Walking Into
Send us the environment, the headcount, and your incident history, and we will build the program around it.
Official agency, organization, or corporate email required.