Meet our World-Class Team

Dynamis ICM Award Centre

Gerard O'Dea - Director of Training

Gerard is responsible for developing our training programmes to meet the needs of our clients and ensuring that Dynamis stays at the forefront of training provision.  With clients all over the UK, the UAE and internationally across a wide variety of sectors, Gerard makes sure all of our experiences as a team converge on customer needs.

Zeb Glover - Specialist Trainer

Zeb has been a member of our training team since 2007 and is one of the most experienced trainers in the country.

"Great trainer, interesting, helpful, steady learning pace, well delivered, learned a lot from it. Zeb was a great instructor and learnt a lot from the day."

"Thank you for the training session that Zeb delivered on Monday.  The feedback I have had has been good and the use of the blended learning worked well too.  One of our school’s teams had to use strategies and their skills yesterday so it was very timely too." - Head of Inclusion, The Mead School

Steve O'Dea - Client Management

Steve is responsible for listening to our clients and customers about their training needs, schedules and budgets and matching them with our programmes. Specialising in logistics and understanding the meaning of "training investment", Steve helps our clients meet their needs every time.


Trish Hendrick - Client Support Manager

Trish brings experience in healthcare administration and operations from the HSE in Ireland in addition to her background in hospitality and retail front-of-house across the UK.  Our clients now pass into her care for e-learning, finance queries, training schedule changes and all other kinds of support to secure awesome training experiences.  

Prof. Chris Cushion - Coaching and Pedagogy Advisor

Prof. Cushion provides training design and delivery advice to our team based on over 30 years of expertise in coaching and pedagogy.  By co-developing our SCENA Scenario-Driven Approach to training design and delivery, his input keeps Dynamis at the very forefront of learning in Conflict and Physical Interventions.

Vanessa O'Dea - Chief Storyteller

Vanessa is an experienced educator with deep experience at all levels of school management and teaching. Previous posts have included  Director of Education for the Diocese of Carlisle, Head of Boarding at St Teresa's School and teaching Religious Moral and Philosophical Studies for A-Level and GCSE. Vanessa now tells our future customers about the work we do every day to keep everyone safe in education and other environments.

Keith Butchard - Specialist Trainer

Keith has been with Dynamis since 2006, consistently blending his experiences as a parent, involved with sensitive immigration operations and ambulance services provision, with continued professional development in verbal and physical skills training.


"I felt it was a well delivered and appropriate course.  I liked Keith's understanding of the realities of the job we do. He was approachable and delivered the course well." - Teaching Assistant, Hamsey Green Primary

"Excellent  - exceeded my expectations.  Keith was brilliant. Took time to help us in our separate groups and answer questions so I feel a lot better using these new techniques." - Student Paramedic, Nottingham Trent University

Heidi Wroe - Specialist Trainer

Heidi is one of our most popular trainers and has visited hundreds of schools as our Positive Handling training team.


"Heidi was knowledgeable, appreciative of the need for people to share their experiences and gave a great mix of legislative information and practical experience to all candidates."

""We would just like to thank you for the excellent training. Our trainer was fantastic. She was so knowledgeable regarding practice with early years children. It is the first time that we have had someone who totally understood the practicalities of working with children 0-5 years. If you could pass the feedback on to the trainer. Thanks again." - Senior Nursery Manager, Shenley Fields

Alex Hunter - Specialist Trainer

Alex uses his insights into autism and behaviour to help many of our clients who look after vulnerable people. 


"Alex was succinct, humourous, very well prepared and kept the course uplifting and fun. It was the best course I have been on for a long time"


"Can I say 'thank-you' on behalf of myself, our Heads of School and the staff across both schools who attended the training today.  Alex, was great; professional, hard-working and clearly an expert in both theory and practice regarding managing conflict." - Executive Principal TSLT Secondaries

Our clients

Hospitals and Healthcare

Public-Facing Organisations

Local Government  & Citizen Services

Primary and Secondary Schools

Grab a coffee and speak to our training advisor.

With over 15 years of experience working with clients, we are confident that we can gain an understanding of your issues, resources, timeframes and budget quickly and soon propose a training plan which fits your needs.

How to...

Organise Restraint Training Painlessly

We support Positive Behaviour Support approaches

Within PBS-based approaches, underlying difficulties are seen as the target for therapeutic intervention.

  • Using person-centred, values-based approaches to ensure people are living the best life they possibly can.
  • Skilled assessment in order to understand probable reasons why a person presents behaviours of concern; what predicts their occurrence and what factors maintain and sustain them (this area of assessment is often referred to as a functional assessment)
  • The use of behaviour support plans which have been informed by an assessment of these factors in order to ensure that aspects of the person’s environment that they find challenging are identified and addressed, that quality of life is enhanced and that wherever possible people are supported to develop alternative strategies by which they can better meet their own needs. These are referred to as primary preventative strategies.
  • The behaviour support plan must detail the responses such as de-escalation techniques, distraction, diversion and sometimes disengagement to be used by carers/staff when a person starts to become anxious, aroused or distressed. These are referred to as secondary preventative strategies and aim to promote relaxation and avert any further escalation to a crisis.
  • Behaviour support plans include guidance as to how people should react when a person’s agitation further escalates to a crisis where they place either themselves or others at significant risk of harm. This may include the use of restrictive interventions. Within behaviour support plans these are as identified as tertiary strategies.

Safe Services have a Comprehensive Restraint Reduction Training Strategy

We believe that corporate training strategies need to be explicit regarding learning outcomes relating to:

  • the experience of people who use services
  • trauma informed care
  • core skills in building therapeutic relationships
  • the principles of positive behavioural support
  • legal and ethical issues
  • risks associated with restrictive interventions
  • staff thoughts and feelings on being exposed to disturbed behaviour
  • the use of safety planning tools and advance decisions
  • alternatives to restrictive interventions
  • effective use of de-escalation techniques
  • the risks associated with restrictive interventions and how these risks can be minimised
  • the use of breakaway techniques by which to disengage from grabs and holds
  • safe implementation of restrictive physical interventions; and
  • post-incident debriefing and support for staff and people who use services.

Our Partners and Accreditation

ICM Logo

Member of The Institute of

Conflict Management

Dynamis is a Quality Award Centre with the ICM, a recognised accrediting body in the U.K. for workplace training in the prevention and management of workplace violence.

Healthcare Myth 2: If I Say Something It Will Make Things Worse 2

European partner for Vistelar

Dynamis is the premier European Partner for Vistelar, a global consulting organisation covering training across the entire spectrum of human conflict.

Personal Safety Trainer 35

Regional representative for 9 Attitudes behavioural tactics

Dynamis represents the 9 Attitudes system, a fully behavioural approach to self-protection and physical control which is based on the observable realities of physical confrontation.

Our Process

1

Book your free training needs assessment.

Every organisation is unique and so you need a unique training course. Our free training needs assessment is a 30-minute process where we identify the risks your staff face and the training solutions you need.

2

We formulate a Bespoke Training Course.

Having understood the needs of your organisation we will create a bespoke training course tailored to your conflict flashpoints, issues and incident profile.

3

Your Staff experience relevant and beneficial training.

We will conduct your bespoke training course. 

4

Satisfaction and Course Follow-up

Following the training session, we will conduct questionnaires with all attendees to give tangible before and after data.

Gerard O'Dea  //  Director of Training at Dynamis

Hi and thanks for visiting our webpage today.


In over 15 years of working with frontline staff who face difficult, distressed and dangerous behaviour, I have seen time and again how prepared staff can perform well and respond to challenging circumstances.


From teachers to nurses, teaching and care assistants to security officers in our hospitals and social workers in the community, if you deal with people every day, managing conflict becomes a necessity.


I became involved in this work because I saw the power of training and preparation in helping people to stay safe at work and to be more successful in working with their colleagues to create better outcomes.


I and my team of professional trainers now teach in over 200 training engagements every year around the UK and internationally for a wide variety of public-facing organisations just like yours.


We have sought out the best conflict management training content and the best learning methods  in the world and bring them together for you and your team.

Gerard O'Dea

Join Over 3,000 Happy Customers

Best Course I have attended in the NHS...

“This was by far the best course I’ve attended in the NHS. Fit for purpose, current, relevant and extremely well delivered.  10/10 for delivery, professionalism and structure.”

Andy W.  //  Security Management Specialist

Informative and Enjoyable...

“A very professionally run training course, Gerard was a very knowledgeable and relaxed instructor who put the group at ease and made the day both informative and enjoyable.”

Stephen B.  // Ambulance Care Assistant

What our customers are saying:

Brought in real life situations...

"I was very nervous about this training but it was a great environment and he made us feel at ease and was encouraging. I liked how he brought in real life situations to make the training more relatable.”

Natalie C.  //  Dementia Care Senior Support

Knowledgeable and Interactive...

“Very approachable, knowledgable and interactive facilitator who encouraged group discussions and used personal experience to back up the theory/learning”

Children's Respite Centre Senior Carer  //  Peterborough City Council.

Frequently Asked Questions

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December 22, 2023

We are absolutely thrilled to share some incredible achievements from the past year from our Conflict, Personal Safety and Protective Intervention training programmes. Our customers, like you, have helped us to make great strides in delivering a record number of top-quality training engagements across the UK (more than 400 individual engagements), Ireland (more than 50), (read more)

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