Our Story

After working in a variety of education and care settings, in 1999 Dean Cotton pursued his interest in behaviour and started work as a behaviour lead at a school for children with Social, Emotional and Mental Health (SEMH) needs.

During this time, Dean trained the staff team in positive behaviour strategies resulting in a 95% reduction of serious incidents, exclusions were also reduced to zero. Accurate and transparent incident recording alongside analysis of the data collected was used to create effective behaviour plans, this was a key element to the reduction in behaviour incidents.

After completing a Master’s Degree at Leicester University in 2012, Dean went on to become a University Lecturer, Independent Researcher, Behaviour Consultant and Conference Speaker both in the UK and abroad.

Dean Cotton - Director

As a Behaviour Consultant, I was frustrated with the inefficiency of behaviour incident recording in schools, children’s homes and care settings. The data collected was often filed away, rarely analysed, and only revisited in case of allegations. Existing systems were not designed to improve behaviour.

This led me to conceive Behaviour Smart, a system designed to enhance behaviour management. However, the high cost of software development deterred me. Despite my wife’s encouragement and discussions about re-mortgaging the house, taking loans, or seeking investors, I decided against it. Karen believed in Behaviour Smart, and she believed in me, but in 2019, she unfortunately passed away from cancer. Before Karen died she requested that I develop Behaviour Smart. Honouring her wish, I proceeded with the project.

I began by recruiting three groups of people. A development team a legal team, and a technical team. The development team focus on the features of the Behaviour Smart system and discusses our users’ ideas, the legal team focuses on how the system supports services and individuals legally and data protection. and the technical team work their magic and speaks in a way nobody really understands to make it all happen.

Behaviour Smart works by encouraging staff to reflect on incidents through structured reports. It features a dedicated post-incident learning page based on extensive research, to improve outcomes for individuals and staff. It records not just the de-escalation techniques used, but also their effectiveness. This data is exported to a well-designed behaviour plan, or ‘Smart Plan’. Behaviour Smart also includes an analytics feature which makes analysing data easy.

Behaviour Smart users have experienced significant reductions in behaviour incidents, with some reporting over an 80% reduction after using Behaviour Smart for just one year.

I am so proud of our unique system and the impact it is having on services that use it. No other incident recording system does what Behaviour Smart does and you won’t believe what’s around the corner.

Thanks for making me do this Karen x