What is Positive Behavior Support (PBS)?
Positive Behavior Support is a comprehensive and inclusive approach that positively and proactively focuses on developing effective behavior supports and preventing problems before they occur by changing environments, teaching new skills, and improving the quality of life.
Positive Behavior Support is the application of evidence-based strategies to achieve important and valued changes in the lives of people. Although positive behavior support was initally developed for use with individuals with disabilities exhibiting severe challenging behavior, positive behavior support has been extended to use in many other areas and applications.
Positive Behavior Support was derived from behavior analysis, the science of behavior, and uses the principles and technology of behavior analysis to affect durable, positive changes in the lives of others.
The focus of Positive Behavior Support is to facilitate lifestyle enhancement through an emphasis on interventions implemented by typical care providers (e.g., teachers, parents, the individual) in community settings using strategies that are acceptable to everyone and that do not demean the individual.
Changes achieved via positive behavior support are design to be durable over time and generalized to other settings. Critical components of positive behavior support include emphasis on pre-treatment functional assessment, the use of multi-component interventions, and emphasison lifestyle enhancement.
- Functional Assessment strategies are designed to assist in development of testable hypotheses
about the reasons why problem behavior is occurring. Methods of
functional assessment include direct methods such as naturalistic
observations and indirect methods such as interviews. Research suggests
functional assessments should include multiple methods including both
direct and indirect techniques. A functional assessment provides
information about events that precede problem behavior and events that
follow or maintain problem behavior. The functional assessment also provides information about skill deficits that may be contributing to problem behavior.
- Multi-component interventions
consist of several different strategies and the emphasis is on making
problem behavior inefficient and unnecessary. This is achieved by
changing the setting (e.g., by training teachers), training new skills,
(e.g., communication, peer interaction, job skills) and altering
consequences for appropriate behavior (developing reward programs) and
problem behavior (making problem behavior inefficient and ineffective).
Click here for information about multi-component interventions.
- Lifestyle enhancement is key in
positive behavior support. The emphasis is not only on reduction of
problem behavior, but also facilitating positive and broad-reaching
changes in a person's life. Positive changes might include (but
certainly are not limited to) developing and maintaining friendships,
finding and maintaining valued employment, developing communication
skills, identifying community supports, improving grades, and
developing leisure skills. Lifestyle enhancement is often facilitated
by person-centered planning or futures planning.
