Positive Behaviour Support
What is Positive Behaviour Support?
Positive Behaviour Support is an approach which focuses on the development of a plan based on evidence. The goal is to increase a participant’s quality of life while decreasing the frequency and severity of their behaviours of harm/concern.
Positive Behaviour Support enables participants to participate actively in the management of their own lives.
Positive behaviour support (PBS) is based upon the principle that if you can teach someone a more effective and more acceptable behaviour than the challenging one, the challenging behaviour will reduce.
Positive Behaviour Support
Suggests challenging behaviour is learned, and so is open to being changed.
Teaches alternative behaviour and changes the environment to support the person well.
Believes there is nothing wrong with wanting attention, to escape from a difficult situation, wanting certain items, or displaying behaviours which just feel good
Helps people to get the life they want by increasing the number of ways of achieving these things: for example, by developing communication skills.
Helps people to learn new skills. For these to be used regularly, they have to be more effective than the challenging behaviour.
Aims to understand the reasons people display challenging behaviour, to ensure the new behaviour we want to teach is reinforced in the same way.
What can our Behaviour Support Practitioner do for you?
An NDIS Behaviour Support Practitioner can:
Undertake behavioural support assessments (including a functional behavioural assessments)
Develop behaviour support plans because:
A PBS Plan means that everyone consistently uses the same techniques, rather than everybody ‘doing their own thing’ based on what they think is best.
It’s a good idea to have the strategies written down and formalised in a PBS plan, so everyone can agree to follow it and be aware of amendments.
A PBS plan can be developed and used at any age.
The earlier challenging behaviour can be understood and strategies put in place to help reduce the behaviours, the better it is for the person and those caring for them.
When everyone supporting the person uses the same approaches it helps the person with a disability to development of more effective ways of communicating their needs.
It is useful for anyone caring for the child or adult to see what is and what isn’t working and enables carers to adapt or change strategies as necessary.