Behavior Support Plans are known by many names. These include:
- Behaviour Reduction Plan
- Behaviour Intervention Plan
- Positive Behaviour Support Plan
The type of language a behaviour analyst uses when writing a BSP will depend on its audience. When writing for parents or staff with limited training, they might use less ?behavioural language?. For example, setting events might be described as ?slow triggers? while antecedents might be described as ?fast triggers?. As an RBT implementing a BSP, your supervisor will most likely expect you to understand behavioural terms like SD or motivating operation and will script the plan accordingly.
All interventions are chosen based on the hypothesised function of behaviour described in the Summary Statement of a Functional Behaviour Assessment. For any significant challenging behaviour, a BSP normally involves multiple elements. It may include interventions aimed at reducing motivation to engage in challenging behaviour, removing certain antecedents to it, teaching alternative means of accessing a similar form of reinforcement and reducing or eliminating reinforcement for the challenging behaviour.
A variety of formats are used however all BSP?s should provide a roadmap regarding how to reduce a behaviour that challenges. Most formats distinguish between:
- Proactive Strategies
- Reactive Strategies
Proactive Strategies
Environmental Accommodations and Antecedent Interventions
Sometimes, challenging behaviour is influenced by setting events and antecedents related to aspects of the physical environment. These can include things like lighting, heat, noise or space. It can also be influenced by internal stimuli related to pain, hunger or thirst. Other factors that occur before a behaviour and influence its occurrence can include things in the social environment such as low levels of attention, rudeness, high levels of demand or the presence of non-preferred people.
One of the goals of the functional assessment is to identify such factors and a BSP should outline the strategies taken to address them.
For example, if noise has been identified as a factor, then you might noise-proof a room or provide somebody with earphones or ear defenders. If hunger or thirst have been identified as factors, then one might make sure that it is easy for a client to access food and drink. If particular styles of interaction upset a client, then the BSP should state the preferred style of interaction. If pain is a factor, you would make sure that the person received the medical care they needed and implement the recommendations of a physician.
Direct Interventions
Direct Interventions typically take on the form of reinforcing alternative contextually-appropriate skills over challenging behaviour. This can include reinforcing all other behaviour or functionally equivalent replacement behaviors. For may clients, direct interventions take the form of behaviour or reward contracts.
Skills Teaching
The skills teaching component of a behaviour support plan will typically outline skills that, when mastered, will help the client to have a better quality of life. Targets are often functionally equivalent or related to the function of the behaviour that challenges. By teaching, for example, a communication response that achieves the same outcome as a challenging behaviour, you can make it unnecessary. In other cases, skills that are designed to help somebody cope in situations where they are stressed by something in their environment may help.
Reactive Strategies
Reactive strategies describe what to do when a behavior that challenge occurs. They typically have the goal of keeping people safe, decreasing the likelihood of the behavior occurring in the future and preventing the behavior from becoming more extreme. Many reactive strategies involve some aspect of reinforcement and extinction. All reactive strategies need to ensure that they do not violate a person?s human rights.
A reactive strategy might include:
- Redirecting to another activity
- Removing something from the environment
- Giving somebody space
- Providing certain directions or suggestions
- Prompting a contextually appropriate communication response
- Offering verbal mediation
As some behaviours that challenge occur as part of a behaviour chain and escalate in seriousness, some behaviour support plans will direct you to react differently at different stages within an escalation.
Reactive strategies should be appropriate to context. Remember, as we discussed during Module 1, ABA professionals and paraprofessionals should ensure that they do not use procedures that are harmful, degrading, painful or dehumanising when trying to achieve socially significant goals.
Summary
As we noted earlier, different organisations and supervisors use different formats and terms for behaviour support plans. In some organisations, skills teaching targets may be included in the behaviour support plan while in others, they may be listed in a separate document. In some organisations, the behavior support plan may be combined with a crisis intervention plan, while in others they are separated. In some organisations a visual schedule might be listed as an antecedent intervention, while in others, it might listed as a skills teaching target.
While terms and classifications may differ, the strategies remain largely the same. To recap:
A behaviour support plan is based on the results of a Functional Behaviour Assessment. It uses the information derived from that assessment to introduce strategies that make a behaviour ineffective, inefficient, or irrelevant. A BSP will typically incorporate strategies that:
- Decreases motivation to engage in a behaviour that challenge
- Removes or reduces the number of antecedents to challenging behaviour
- Reinforces other behaviours especially alternative or incompatible behaviors
- Teaches functionally equivalent or related skills
- Removes or reduces the reinforcing consequences that are maintaining a harmful behavior
The BSP document guides intervention and ensures that everybody responds to challenging behaviour consistently