Presented by :
CCCW Behavior Support Oversight Committee (BSOC)
EFFECTIVE POSITIVE BEHAVIOR SUPPORT
PLANNING
WHAT WE WILL BE REVIEWING TODAY
Steps for effective Positive Behavior Support
Planning.
 Data collection.
 Identifying the function of a behavior.
 Putting a plan together.
 Reviewing the plan.

POSITIVE BEHAVIOR SUPPORT PLANNING
Overall goal is to support members through a
positive environment and positive daily
interactions that supports member’s strengths
and abilities.
 We do this through pro-active approaches and
strategic responsive approaches.
 A positive behavior support plan documents and
lays out these approaches for individuals working
with the member.

STEPS FOR EFFECTIVE POSITIVE BEHAVIOR
SUPPORT PLANNING (BSP)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Identify and define the target behaviors.
Collect data around the target behavior.
Identify function of the target behavior.
Develop a plan to support the target behavior.
Train staff and collect data.
Review and make changes to the plan.
IDENTIFY & PRIORITIZE TARGET BEHAVIORS

Does the behavior lead to significant negative
outcomes for the individual?
 Health
and safety risk
 Loss of independence
 Decrease in quality of life
 Barrier to an outcome
DEFINING THE TARGET BEHAVIOR
Objective
 Clear
 Simple
 Concise
 Everyone is in agreement

WHICH OF THESE ARE GOOD DEFINITIONS OF A
TARGET BEHAVIOR?
Aggression
 Grabbing and/or pinching a staff or peer.
 Obsessing over an item
 Five or more requests for a can of soda after being
verbally redirected within a fifteen minute
timeframe
 Self-injurious behavior
 Example??

DATA COLLECTION
Simple is better
 Trying to identify the ABC components.
 Antecedents (what happen before the behavior)
 Behavior (the defined target behavior)
 Consequence (event that happened right after the
behavior, what seemed to reinforce?)
 The intent is to try and get some baseline data to
allow you to make an educated guess on the
function of the behavior.

EASY DATA PLOTS
QUESTIONS TO ASK WHEN LOOKING AT THE
DATA
What are the common Antecedents?
 What setting does the behavior occur most often?
 With whom did the behavior occur most often
with?
 Is there a specific time during the day? Does it
occur during transition?
 Anything unique about the environment where the
behavior occurred most often?
 What were the immediate consequence,
reinforcements after the behavior?

IDENTIFYING FUNCTION
This is key to putting the correct supports in
place.
 The wrong intervention may actually become
counter productive and reinforce the unwanted
behavior.
 Lots of good tools out there.

IDENTIFYING FUNCTION
Medical
 Disability/Mental illness based
 Attention seeking
 Maladaptive coping skills
 Task avoidance
 Environmental (sensory)
 Communication barriers
 Any others???

PUT THE PIECES TOGETHER
ALWAYS RULE OUT MEDICAL FIRST!!!
 Modifying the environment.
 Creating alternatives to desired behaviors.
 Tactical ignoring of the behavior.
 Positive reinforcement for adaptive behavior.
 Changing expectations and demands.
 Teaching of adaptive, and coping skills.
 Any others?

REMEMBER
Stay away from interventions that are punitive
in nature where change is based on fear or loss
of individual rights/services.
 These type of interventions do not support the
root cause of the behavior.

SOME KEYS TO EFFECTIVE POSITIVE
BEHAVIOR SUPPORT PLAN IMPLEMENTATION
Make sure everyone has buy-in to the plan.
 Make sure staff are trained on the
interventions within the plan.
 Try to have consistent overlap within
environments if there are multiple providers
and settings involved.
 Consistency will take out the variable of
inconsistency.

DATA COLLECTION
Ongoing data collection is essential to
measuring the success of supports in place
and allows you to continue to evaluate the plan
and make tweaks along the way.
 Data collection should be formatted to be
simple and allow consistency within all staff
observation.
 Can and should be similar to the method that
was used to identify function.

PLAN EVALUATION

How do you know if things are getting better or
worse?
 Plot
your data
 Look for patterns
 Take the time to understand the information.
 Meet with the team to discuss the next steps.
PLANNED CHANGES BASED ON INFORMATION
Look to see if the interventions should be
paired with other rewards to increase
effectiveness.
 Did the intervention reduce the target
behavior? If not, what else could we consider?
 Did we guess wrong on the function or has the
function changed?

A CIRCULAR PROCESS
Positive Behavior Support Plans are living and
breathing plans.
 Things in life change.
 You need to continually collect and review data.
 And make changes as appropriate.

“Situational variables can exert powerful
influences over human behavior, more so that
we recognize or acknowledge.”
Philip Zimbardo