POSITIVE BEHAVIOUR SUPPORT
When a child is showing behaviours of concern, this may look like frequent meltdowns, aggression, self-injury, running away, withdrawal, refusal, property damage, or behaviours that make everyday routines feel unsafe or difficult.
Positive Behaviour Support, or PBS, helps families better understand what may be behind a child’s behaviour, including communication, routines, sensory needs and daily experiences.
The goal of Positive Behaviour Support is to help your child feel safer, build skills, reduce behaviours of concern, and create more positive everyday experiences at home, school and in the community.
At AIM Therapy, PBS is tailored to your child and the people who support them, with practical strategies that can be used consistently in everyday life.
WHAT WE DO
Our team works closely with children, families, educators and other supports to understand what is happening and create strategies that feel realistic for everyday life.
We focus on helping the people around the child respond with greater confidence, consistency and care.
The key stages of positive behaviour support are:
1. Interim Behaviour Support Plan
If restrictive practices are currently in place, an Interim Behaviour Support Plan may be developed to provide immediate guidance and support safety while we build a deeper understanding of your child’s needs.
2. Functional Behaviour Assessment
We complete a Functional Behaviour Assessment to better understand when behaviour happens, what may be triggering it, what may be maintaining it, and what your child may be trying to communicate.
3. Comprehensive Behaviour Support Plan
Using this information, we develop a personalised Behaviour Support Plan with practical strategies, skill-building opportunities and recommendations for home, school and community settings.
4. Ongoing implementation and support
We support families, educators and other key people to put strategies into practice through coaching, collaboration and ongoing guidance.
5. Progress report
We review progress to understand what is working, what has changed, and what may be needed next.
Looking for Positive Behaviour Support for a child?
AIM Therapy can help you understand the next steps and whether Positive Behaviour Support may be the right fit for your child and family.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) is an evidence-based, person-centred approach designed to understand and address risk of harm behaviours, helping families better understand what may be behind a child’s behaviour, including communication, daily routines, and sensory needs.
Our team works with children, families and their support teams to help children feel safer, reduce behaviours of concern, and create more positive experiences at home, school and in the community.
We develop a personalised Behaviour Support Plan, which covers strategies like improved communication and social skills, environmental changes, safe methods of response to unsafe behaviours, and stress and anger management.
The support approaches that your child needs will be tailored and unique for them depending on their circumstances. PBS starts with adjusting the main environments your child engages in, such as home, community, and school. This may involve altering the environment to meet their sensory needs, changing communication styles, use of language and phrasing, or creating schedules to support predictability and consistency. Our practitioner will work alongside you to implement these strategies into the environments and collect information on their effectiveness to understand what works best for the child.
PBS sessions will vary depending on the child’s needs and focus area. There will be various types of sessions/appointments such as team meetings, observations, parent coaching, allied health/school training, and sessions orientated around behaviour assessments and data collection
Some sessions may involve more interaction with the child or more interaction with the key supports. Frequency and duration can also vary, with on average being one-hour sessions occurring every 1-4 weeks depending on the need. Some sessions may occur face to face in the community, home, or clinic, or may be more online through telehealth and phone calls. Face to face sessions may typically be longer at 1-2 hours, whereas online may be shorter around the 30–60-minute mark.
PBS follows a structured service delivery that your practitioner will guide you through. This looks like:
- Initial appointment and observations: Gathering contextual information, understanding the need for PBS, observing the child’s behaviour at home, school, and in the community and meeting with key supports, such as teachers and other allied health practitioners.
- First months: We will complete an Interim Behaviour Support Plan within one month if there are restrictive practices in place. Otherwise, we will continue working with key supports, developing shared goals, and continue with behaviour data collection and assessments.
- Monitoring and further development: We start to understand what is and isn’t effective and continue with collecting data to develop the Comprehensive Behaviour Support Plan, an individualised and person-centred report that details proactive and response strategies.
- Implementation and monitoring: We work with you and your child’s key supports to implement the Comprehensive Behaviour Support Plan, provide ongoing support and work on fading out restrictive practices when safe and suitable to do so.
PBS is about creating long-term and sustainable supports that help children and families improve quality of life and wellbeing. This can include creating a calmer home environment through behaviour reduction, understanding triggers for behaviours of concern, understanding your child’s escalation cycle and how to respond, reducing stress and burnout, supporting with daily routines, and improving emotional regulation and engagement with school and the community.