New Zealand Human Rights Commission Submission to the CAT in relation to NZ’s 6th periodic review interventions staff are now utilising on a daily basis. This useful suite of practical interventions has given staff more confidence when working with people who are expressing very strong emotions. This has resulted in stronger therapeutic relationships and earlier recognition of escalation of distress, with more timely interventions.  Prevention tools; Personal safety plans, where a consumer works with a member of staff and/or their family to identify what does and doesn’t help when they are feeling highly agitated and distressed, is a tool which many have found very useful. This is something that is not fully implemented across CDHB services yet but will be progressively rolled out.  Consumer, Family and Cultural perspectives; collaboration has resulted in effective changes to models of care, training programmes and many processes within the consumer’s journey. For example consumers are jointly delivering training with clinical staff on communication, de-escalation and interpersonal skills. During this training consumers talk about the traumatic effects of seclusion on them as individuals. This sharing of experiences has reinforced staff belief that seclusion should only ever be a very last resort and commitment to continue to look for ways to eliminate its use.  Evaluation – every time seclusion is used a review is completed to gain greater understanding of why seclusion was required and what could be done differently in future to reduce the likelihood of it happening again. 182. As a result of this process the use of seclusion at CDHB has reduced significantly during the last five years across all our services. One service has managed to eliminate it completely and decommission both its seclusion rooms. Total seclusion hours SMHS 4000 Total seclusi on hours SMHS 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 69 Jan-15 Nov-14 Sep-14 Jul-14 May-14 Mar-14 Jan-14 Nov-13 Sep-13 Jul-13 May-13 Mar-13 Jan-13 Nov-12 Sep-12 Jul-12 May-12 Mar-12 0 Linear (Total seclusi on hours SMHS)