Vancouver School Board’s Urgent Intervention Process – purpose, process, and controversy

The Urgent Intervention Process (UIP) – formerly known as the Multi-Interdisciplinary Support Team (MIST) – is a Vancouver School Board (VSB) initiative designed to provide rapid support for schools dealing with students with extremely challenging behaviours or acute needs.

The program was expanded in the mid-2010s as part of VSB’s special education support model, with the stated goal of providing “timely resources and support to schools in areas related to Special Education” media.vsb.bc.ca.

In essence, when a student’s behaviour or safety issues escalate beyond what a school’s normal resources can manage, the UIP team can be called in to assist.

Who makes up the UIP Team

The UIP is a multi-disciplinary team of specialists. (The previous name MIST literally stood for Multi-Interdisciplinary Support Team.) According to a VSB special education review, the team has included professionals such as school psychologists, counsellors, speech-language pathologists, and district resource teachers media.vsb.bc.ca. The UIP also employs specialised School & Student Support workers trained in managing challenging behaviour. A job posting for the UIP’s “Challenging Behaviour” team describes staff who can design and implement individualised Behaviour Support Plans, collect and evaluate data on student behaviour, manage verbal or physical “acting out” incidents, and prepare behaviour intervention materials network.applytoeducation.com. Staff travel between schools as needed, reflecting the program’s itinerant, district-wide nature network.applytoeducation.com. Notably, the qualifications emphasise background in psychology or education and experience with behaviour-management strategies (including non-violent crisis intervention training) network.applytoeducation.com. In theory, the UIP staff are also supposed to “liaise with parents/caregivers” as part of their role network.applytoeducation.com, although how much direct family collaboration occurs in practice is a point of contention (as we’ll see below).

What is the purpose of UIP

The VSB frames the UIP as a support mechanism for inclusive education. The team’s mission is to stabilise crisis situations and build capacity at the school level so that students with intense behaviour or social-emotional needs can be successfully included. For example, UIP support workers aim to “establish positive relationships with individual students and school teams in order to build school capacity” for managing challenging behaviours network.applytoeducation.com. By providing expert guidance, additional staffing, and short-term intervention plans, the district intends to help both the student in crisis and the school staff who may feel overwhelmed. In other words, the UIP is meant to bolster the “safe and caring schools” mandate by intervening quickly when a student poses a safety risk to self or others, or when a situation is disrupting the learning environment.

How the Urgent Intervention Process (UIP) works

The Urgent Intervention Process is formally triggered through a school-based decision. According to training documents and VSB protocols, the school’s School-Based Team (SBT) – a committee of teachers, administrators, and support staff – must first determine that a student’s behaviour is “sufficiently disruptive or [the student is] sufficiently at risk to self or others to require special intervention.” Only if the SBT concludes that standard supports aren’t enough will they initiate the UIP referral veaes.ca. This makes the UIP a kind of “last resort” intervention, reserved for severe cases.

Referral and escalation

Once the SBT agrees an urgent intervention is needed, the matter is escalated to the district level. The school principal (or vice-principal) contacts the Learning Services department at VSB. There is a referral form and documentation required – indeed, a VSB template notes that “appropriate documentation must be accompanied by the referral form” when submitting a UIP request vancouverdpac.org. The request is sent to a central email (UIP@vsb.bc.ca) for the district team. At that point, a designated district administrator reviews it. According to UIP process guidelines, the Director of Instruction or their designate, in consultation with the appropriate Associate Superintendent, will determine how to proceed veaes.ca. (In VSB’s hierarchy, Directors of Instruction and Associate Superintendents are senior managers – more on leadership below.)

If the referral is accepted as meeting the urgent criteria, the process moves very quickly. 

• Step 1: The referral and supporting documents are submitted to the district UIP coordinator. 
• Step 2: A district designate “will date and assign [a] UIP staff member” to the case veaes.ca veaes.ca. In other words, a specific specialist (or team) from the UIP is dispatched to work with the school. 
• Step 3: The UIP staff member makes an initial contact/assessment, likely by visiting the school, observing the student, and consulting with the school team veaes.ca.

Because these situations are often urgent, the protocol calls for a rapid response – one internal document mandates that within 5 days of the referral, a meeting should be held to develop an interim support plan for the student veaes.ca.

Developing an intervention plan

In that interim planning meeting, the UIP specialist(s) meet with the school-based team (and sometimes additional district staff or consultants) to create a plan tailored to the student. This could involve a variety of measures:

• Adjustments to the student’s program or schedule, such as modified days or alternative activities veaes.ca.
• Further assessments or evaluations (for example, a psycho-educational assessment or functional behaviour analysis) if the root causes of the behaviour aren’t clear veaes.ca.
• Alternate placement or setting considerations – in extreme cases, the team might recommend moving the student to a specialised program or a shorter-term part-time intervention program for intensive support veaes.ca.
• Specialised teaching or behaviour strategies for the classroom teacher – e.g. new behaviour plans, visual supports, reward systems, or other techniques for managing the behaviour veaes.ca.
• Extra staffing or resources – the UIP might deploy an additional support worker to the class for a period of time, or arrange expert consults (the union agreement even allows for “release time for the enrolling teacher” to collabourate on planning veaes.ca).

Importantly, once an interim plan is formulated, the UIP process also includes follow-up steps. The plan is implemented and data is collected on the student’s progress. Cases typically stay open only for a limited duration; the UIP is short-term intervention, not a permanent service. One counselling professional’s description suggests the length of UIP interventions can range over a few weeks or months depending on the case (the exact duration is not publicly documented, but it’s meant to be time-limited support rather than year-long help).

At the conclusion of the intervention period, the case is reviewed. Often, the ultimate outcome is to either stabilise the student at their home school with additional supports or to formally refer the student to VSB’s “Learning Services Screening” committee for a possible special needs designation or placement veaes.ca. In other words, the UIP may help gather evidence to decide if the student should be classified in a Ministry special needs category (which can bring extra funding) or placed in a district program. This means the UIP can act as a bridge to longer-term solutions: after the urgent phase, the student might end up, for example, in a behaviour support program class or get access to a full-time educational assistant, depending on what the evidence and the screening committee decide veaes.ca.

Throughout this process, the emphasis from the school and district’s perspective is on protecting safety and supporting the teacher. The immediate priority is to defuse unsafe situations (e.g. aggressive outbursts, self-harm, etc.) and to equip the classroom staff with strategies to manage the student. During COVID-19, for instance, UIP staff were listed among “workers who can operate across multiple learning groups,” underscoring that they intervene in person across schools despite cohort restrictions media.vsb.bc.ca. This highlights that their role is considered essential to maintaining functioning classrooms when crises arise.

Who runs the UIP?

The Urgent Intervention Process is situated within the Vancouver School Board’s Learning Services division, which oversees inclusive education and student support services more broadly. According to formal district protocol, school requests for urgent intervention are escalated to “the appropriate Associate Superintendent,” who holds authority to determine whether UIP resources will be deployed in response.

In operational practice, coordination appears to rest with senior managers at the district level—particularly within the portfolio of inclusive learning. Directors of Instruction, who oversee a range of school support services, are often involved in communicating with schools and families about UIP cases. While ultimate decisions rest with executive leadership, these directors may help initiate or monitor the intervention process, especially when specialist staff or cross-school collaboration is involved.

The program’s leadership team includes individuals with responsibility for inclusive education across the district. This team appears to play a central role in determining whether a case meets the threshold for urgent intervention and in coordinating the appropriate supports when requests are approved.

One striking feature of the Urgent Intervention Process, as it has been described and experienced, is the limited visibility of parents in the planning and decision-making structure. While the process includes space to document parent or guardian contact information—suggesting that families are informed of referrals—there appears to be no formal mechanism requiring parental consultation or participation in determining how supports are selected or delivered.

Accounts from families who have navigated this process indicate that, beyond receiving notification, they are seldom invited to contribute meaningfully to the planning or development of the intervention itself. This stands in clear contrast to long-standing provincial policy affirming the rights and responsibilities of parents to participate in determining their children’s educational services. Vancouver’s District Parent Advisory Council has also underscored the importance of upholding these participatory rights, particularly when significant interventions are being contemplated.

Internal messaging from district staff characterises the program as one designed primarily to support school personnel in responding to complex situations. In this framing, the structure and purpose of UIP remain centred on professional coordination, with family engagement occurring downstream—often after key decisions have already been made.

Complaints and criticisms: “a way to quell parent complaints”?

Despite its well-intended purpose, the Urgent Intervention Process has come under fire from some parents who have experienced it first-hand. Critics argue that the UIP often serves more to placate parents’ concerns than to truly address a child’s underlying needs. Several issues have been raised:

• Lack of meaningful parent involvement: Parents are commonly kept at arm’s length throughout the UIP process. One Vancouver mother whose autistic child went through the UIP noted that she was not invited to be part of the intervention planning. In her words, she had to force a 45-minute conversation with a UIP staffer, during which “he just looked at me like I was an alien” – underscoring the disconnect between the family and the UIP team. Officially, UIP staff are supposed to communicate with families network.applytoeducation.com, but in practice this may be limited to occasional updates rather than true collaboration. The parent felt the program was presented as something “just for teachers to feel supported”, with her input neither solicited nor valued. This exclusion runs contrary to the policy ideals that parents should help shape the services for their child vancouverdpac.org.
• “Behaviourist” approach and compliance-focused strategies: Perhaps the sharpest criticism is that UIP recommendations rely on outdated behaviourist methods – essentially focusing on making the child comply with the school’s demands, instead of adapting the environment to the child. In a candid email to VSB officials, one parent wrote that she was “deeply concerned by the continued reliance on behaviourist strategies, which prioritise compliance over addressing the systemic and environmental challenges that contribute to [my child’s] dysregulation.” Her daughter, an autistic and ADHD student, was struggling to tolerate the mainstream classroom environment, which lacked sufficient staff to support all learners. The UIP’s plan, however, emphasised tactics like gradually increasing her time in class (a compliance training approach) without sufficiently mitigating the triggers that were causing her meltdowns. The parent poignantly described “asking her to ‘gradually tolerate’ this environment without meaningful changes” as akin to “asking her to develop a growing tolerance for torture.” In other words, the UIP strategy in that case seemed to be “make the child endure the stress until they stop reacting”, which the family found inhumane and not aligned with modern, trauma-informed educational practices.
• Ignoring root causes and environmental factors: There is a sense that UIP advice can be one-dimensional – focused on the child’s behaviour in isolation, rather than the full context. In the case above, the student was experiencing sensory overload in a loud classroom and also being bullied by peers. The UIP plan, according to the parent, “does not adequately address the sensory and emotional triggers in the classroom”, nor did it tackle the peer harassment issue – “leaving a significant gap in her support,” she noted. Instead, one of the measures was to have the student sit on a couch in the hallway when overwhelmed, effectively avoiding the classroom rather than fixing the classroom environment. The parent argued that this approach failed to create a “sensory-friendly or emotionally safe environment” for her child to re-engage in learning. Critics say this exemplifies how UIP interventions can sometimes put the onus on the child to change rather than making necessary accommodations in the setting. This runs counter to principles of inclusive education, where the environment and teaching should be adapted to the child’s needs as much as possible, not vice versa.
• Short-term fixes and “case closed” mentality: Because the UIP is a short-term intervention, there is pressure to resolve situations quickly. Some parents feel the program’s goal becomes checking the box and exiting rather than achieving a truly stable solution. In the example of the autistic student, the UIP team closed the case while the child was still refusing to attend class due to distress. The parent was alarmed to see the case marked “closed” under those circumstances, which “gives the impression that the goal is merely to force her back into compliance rather than to build on her self-advocacy and create a supportive environment where she can thrive.” In other words, once the child technically returned to class (even if just physically present and not engaged), the UIP considered their job done. From the family’s perspective, this felt like a superficial outcome – the deeper issues (sensory overload, anxiety, peer issues) remained unresolved, but the UIP’s involvement was over. Such experiences feed the perception that UIP exists to make the school look like it “did something” in response to a crisis, without ensuring that the something was actually effective for the child in the long run.
• Lack of transparency and accountability: Another complaint is that it’s very hard for parents (or the public) to get information about UIP’s workings. There is no easily accessible report on how many cases the UIP handles, what its success rate is, or what strategies it typically employs. Meetings happen behind closed doors, and plans are often not shared in detail with families. In one case, a parent requested detailed documentation on a program (the “EASE” anxiety program) that UIP was proposing for her child, so that her child’s doctor could vet it – a reasonable ask – but it seems this information wasn’t provided. Without transparency, parents worry that the UIP operates with carte blanche to apply whatever methods it sees fit (potentially outdated or unsuitable ones) with little oversight.
• Similarities to controversial external programs: Some parents compare the UIP’s style to that of POPARD, the Provincial Outreach Program for Autism, which has historically been rooted in Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA). POPARD provides consultation to schools on autistic students, and some families in BC have criticised it for overly behavioural, compliance-driven approaches. The fact that the UIP heavily emphasises behaviour management training (e.g. CPI – Crisis Prevention/Intervention – workshops, token systems, etc.) network.applytoeducation.com strikes these parents as “more of that behaviourist garbage”. In other words, the UIP is seen as a local extension of an old-school paradigm: treat challenging behaviour only with rewards, consequences, and perseverance, rather than through a lens of mental health, sensory processing, or trauma-informed care. This is a philosophical clash – proponents of neurodiversity-affirming practices advocate for understanding why a child is acting out (e.g. sensory overwhelm, communication frustration, anxiety) and accommodating those needs, whereas a strict behaviourist approach might say the why doesn’t matter – only changing the outward behaviour does.

It’s important to note that teachers and school staff have their perspective as well. Many teachers welcome the UIP because they feel ill-equipped to handle violent or extremely disruptive incidents in class. A small elementary school might see only a rare serious case, so having a district “SWAT team” to call in can be a relief. Indeed, the union has fought to formalise the UIP process in the collective agreement so that teachers have a clear path to get urgent help. The Vancouver Elementary Teachers’ Association even negotiated language around urgent interventions – ensuring that if a student is that high-risk, the issue will be taken seriously by district management veaes.ca veaes.ca. From the teacher’s standpoint, one can understand that they often do feel more supported when UIP is involved. The criticism, however, is that supporting the teacher alone isn’t enough – the student has to actually benefit from the intervention, and the parent’s concerns need addressing for the solution to be sustainable.

Conclusion: a call for collaboration and change

The Urgent Intervention Process was created with a noble intent: to marshal expertise quickly in support of vulnerable students and overwhelmed educators. There is no doubt that the VSB has invested significant resources into this model, and in some cases it may very well have prevented crises or improved situations in classrooms. However, the accounts from parents like those above suggest that something is fundamentally amiss in how UIP operates. A program that is supposed to help students should not leave families feeling alienated, ignored, or worse – harmed by the intervention.

The core problem seems to be one of philosophy and transparency. If the UIP approaches each case with a “behaviour compliance” mindset and minimal parental input, it is almost destined to clash with families – especially in cases involving neurodivergent students who need a more individualised, compassionate approach. Indeed, the parent of the autistic girl pleaded with the UIP team to adopt a “trauma-informed, neurodiversity-affirming framework” going forward. That means working with the student’s unique needs (and with those who know the student best, i.e. the parents and perhaps external professionals) rather than imposing a one-size-fits-all behaviour plan.

There is also an accountability issue: once a UIP case is “closed,” who evaluates if it truly solved the problem? In the absence of published data or follow-up reports, it falls on parents to speak out when things haven’t improved. The VSB’s own policies and the BC School Act make clear that parents should be partners in shaping their child’s education vancouverdpac.org vancouverdpac.org. If the UIP currently serves to sideline parent voices, that not only violates the spirit of those policies but may lead to less effective outcomes for students. No one knows a child’s triggers, history, and progress better than their family; excluding them is a recipe for missing critical information and losing trust.

In its current form, the Urgent Intervention Process appears to function as a top-down mechanism – something done to a student, rather than with a student and their family. Critics have characterised it as a bureaucratic tool to “quell parent complaints” – essentially, when a parent keeps pressing that their child’s needs aren’t being met or that a class is unsafe, the district can say, “We brought in the UIP team to handle it.” On paper, that sounds responsive. But if the UIP’s involvement doesn’t genuinely address the issues (or worse, if it adds new trauma, as some parents feel), then it’s little more than a smokescreen.

For the UIP to truly succeed, it may require a shift in approach:

• Greater transparency about its procedures and findings, so parents aren’t left in the dark.
• Genuine parent collaboration, inviting families into the problem-solving process from the start rather than as an afterthought.
• Modernised strategies that go beyond behaviourist doctrine – incorporating sensory supports, mental health interventions, and restorative practices to tackle the causes of behaviour.

As it stands, the Vancouver School Board’s Urgent Intervention Process is at a crossroads: it can continue on the path of closed-door consultations and quick fixes, likely continuing to draw anger from those it sidelines, or it can evolve into a more inclusive, holistic support system. The stories emerging now – of children feeling punished for their disabilities and parents comparing the classroom to torture – should serve as a powerful alarm bell. The urgent intervention that may be most needed is one within the program itself: an intervention to bring it in line with the values of dignity, inclusion, and partnership that public education espouses. Until then, the UIP will remain, in the eyes of its harshest critics, an opaque “Band-Aid solution” that fails the very students it is meant to rescue.

Sources:

• Vancouver School Board documents and reports on special education and support teams media.vsb.bc.ca media.vsb.bc.ca
• VSB job posting for Urgent Intervention Process Team – Challenging Behaviour network.applytoeducation.com 
• VSB/Vancouver Elementary Teachers’ union documents outlining the UIP process and criteria veaes.ca 
• Communications involving VSB Directors of Instruction regarding a UIP case
• Parent correspondence and testimony regarding their child’s experience with the UIP (Email excerpts)
• Vancouver DPAC statement on parent rights in education (reinforcing the expectation of parental involvement) vancouverdpac.org.