The behavior support
plan represents the culmination of the assessment process.
Typically developed in connection with person-centered
planning, the behavior support plan is the team’s action
plan outlining the specific steps to be used to promote the child’s
success and participation in daily activities and routines. In
order to be most effective, behavior support plans should be
both carefully developed and clearly written using plain language,
incorporate the values of the family and support team, identify
any prerequisite resources and training needs for implementation,
and include individual components that are both easy to use and
easy to remember.
Click here for references for behavior support plan development.
Behavior support plans must contain the following components:
Behavior Hypothesis
Statements – statements that include
a description of the behavior, triggers or antecedents for the
behavior, maintaining consequences, and the purpose of the problem
behavior.
Prevention Strategies – Strategies
that may be used to reduce the likelihood that the child will
have problem behavior.
These may include environmental arrangements, personal support,
changes in activities, new ways to prompt a child, changes in
expectations, etc.
Replacement Skills – Skills to teach that will replace
the problem behavior.
Consequence Strategies – Guidelines for how the adults
will respond to problem behaviors in ways that will not maintain
the behavior. In addition, this part of the plan may include
positive reinforcement strategies for promoting the child’s
use of new skills or appropriate behavior (this may also be included
in prevention strategies)
Long Term Strategies – This
section of the plan may include long-term goals that will assist
the child and family
in meeting their vision of the child (e.g., develop friends,
attend a community preschool program).
In the PBS
process, challenging behavior is recognized as serving a purpose
for
the child. The identification of the purpose is
the goal of the functional assessment process. Once the
purpose of the behavior is determined (e.g., to escape or to
obtain), an alternative means for achieving the same purpose
of the behavior should be identified and taught to the child.
On very few occasions, the purpose of the behavior cannot be
honored (e.g., child screams and kicks to each car seat). When
the purpose of the behavior cannot be honored, the behavior support
plan may include different replacement skills that are not alternative
skills to achieve the same function. For example, the support
plan for a child who screams and kicks to escape the car seat
could include strategies for teaching the child to select a toy
and play while in his car seat. A replacement skill must be chosen
that will be easy for the child to learn. Thus the team should
look at the other means the child uses to communicate that are
socially conventional and appropriate. For example, a child who
has some natural gestures might be taught a gesture for “finished!” to
escape an activity. What the team should not do is pick a replacement
skills (e.g., raise hand and ask for a break), if it unlikely
that the child can learn the skill quickly and easily.
When selecting
replacement skills, it is important to realize that the more
efficient
and effective the replacement skill,
the more likely it will be used in favor of challenging behavior.
The new skill should produce a positive effect as close to or
as the same function as the challenging behavior, thus making
the child’s challenging behavior less effective or useful.
For example, if the child currently has tantrums in order to
be picked up and cuddled by the parent, the child must have a
way to gain the same results from the person he/she desires.
One should realize that the challenging behavior may serve multiple
functions for the child. For example, a child may head bang to
end play demands and to request a drink. In that case, the child
must be taught skills intentionally using planned procedures
that will serve as replacement skills for each function—to
communicate “finished,” as well as ways to mediate
the demands and a request for a drink.
Two other important
considerations in the instruction of new skills are the efficiency
of the replacement skill in comparison
to the challenging behavior and the extent to which the replacement
skills produce greater results for the child. If the use of the
challenging behavior achieves an effect quickly, the replacement
behavior must also achieve the same results and do so more efficiently.
A critically important issue to consider regarding efficiency
is that replacement skills must be easier for the child in some
way—they should either require less effort to produce and/or
should be easily understood by others. Likewise, rewards for
engaging in the more appropriate replacement skill should be
far greater than that which the child receives for exhibiting
challenging behavior. When these conditions occur, the replacement
skill will be more likely to increase and be more motivating
for the child to learn and use than the challenging behaviors
that were previously so effective. Regardless of which is selected,
replacement skills must be relevant to the child's unique situation,
abilities, and must be an immediately efficient mechanism for
communicating wants and needs.
Click
here for examples of replacement skills for behaviors intended
to obtain attention, objects, or activities
Click
here for examples of replacement skills for behaviors intended
to escape activities, demands, and social interactions
Finally, attention
should be paid to the specific instruction procedures followed
for teaching replacement skills. When teaching
replacement skills, the child’s support team should select
a skill to teach, identify a method of instruction, and systematically
follow the steps required to implement that procedure. The keys
here are consistency and repetition—the child should be
taught replacement skills throughout the day whenever he/she
is not engaging in challenging behavior using the exact same
instruction procedures each time. An activity skills matrix offers
an easy way to identify and plan for the instruction of the replacement
skill. The matrix is used to identify opportunities where the
replacement skill can be taught within a child’s routine
activities and play. For example, if a child is learning to request
attention by raising his arms to the adult for a hug (to replace
screaming and pulling the adult’s hair), this skill can
be taught throughout the day at home and at preschool. The child
could be prompted to ask for a hug when coming in the classroom,
ask fro a hug after making a selection during center time, ask
fro a hug after clean-up, etc. The matrix form can be used to
identify routines in the classroom where a new skill may be taught
(preferably at times where the child is not having problem behavior)
or routines at home where the parent can prompt the use of the
new skill. A matrix is used by listing the skills to be taught
across the top of the chart and the routines or activities down
the side. The support team then looks at those activities or
routines and identifies ways that the new skill can be taught.
When these conditions are met, the potential for successful skill
acquisition becomes greatly increased
Click
here to see an example of a skills matrix
Click
here for a blank skills matrix
Prevention Strategies
Prevention
strategies include the responses that caregivers and professionals
provide or the alterations that may be made to an environment
that make challenging behavior irrelevant (Hieneman et al., 1999).
For example, if a child has difficulty playing with an adult because
he doesn’t understand turn taking, a prevention strategy
may be to announce and signal turn taking to the child. Another
example includes visual strategies used to inform a child who
has difficulty with transitions that a transition is soon to follow.
Making challenging behavior irrelevant typically involves changing
the physical setting of an environment, enriching the environment,
providing the child with more information or adaptive strategies,
decreasing demands by adapting tasks or routines, increasing predictability,
and providing choices to the child. These strategies alone will
not resolve challenging behavior, but they will reduce the child’s
need to use challenging behavior while the child is learning
more
socially-appropriate replacement skills.
Click
here for examples of prevention strategies for behaviors intended
to obtain attention, objects, or activities
Click
here for examples of prevention strategies for behaviors intended
to escape activities, demands, and social interactions
Consequence Strategies
Consequence
strategies are the responses to behavior used by caregivers
and professionals
when the child engages in challenging
behavior. The most important features of consequence strategies
are that selected procedures will make the challenging behavior
ineffective and less useful and that rewards provided to the
child for appropriate behavior will be either equal to or exceed
rewards for engaging in challenging behavior. With respect to
the latter, this feature is achieved in two different ways: 1)
Reinforcement is provided to encourage the use of socially-appropriate
replacement behaviors; and 2) reinforcement is withheld to ensure
that the behavior won’t work for the child (i.e., result
in reinforcement). The most commons strategy that is used in
response to a young child’s challenging behavior is to
redirect the child to use the replacement behavior and then follow
with reinforcement. When that occurs, the child still gets their
needs met and has a reminder that the replacement skill is the
behavior to use to gain access or to escape an activity, object,
or interaction.
Click
here for examples of consequence strategies for behaviors intended
to obtain attention, objects, or activities
Click
here for examples of consequence strategies for behaviors intended
to escape activities, demands, and social interactions
Safety Net Procedures
Whenever a team works
together to help support a child with challenging behavior,
the first concern of the team should always
be safety. This is of particular concern with children who have
a history of dangerous outbursts or behaviors that may place
them directly in danger (e.g., running away)—any specific
procedures that should be followed whenever the child engages
in any challenging behavior that potentially places either the
child or any other person in danger (Hieneman et al., 1999).
If a child has a history of dangerous behavior that places the
child or other in harm, safety net procedures should be developed
and included in the behavior support plan. Safety net procedures
provide a script for what adults will do when the child engages
in behavior that is potentially dangerous. Safety net procedures
are strategies that keep children safe, they do not change behavior.
In the past, strategies that are safety net procedures have been
used by interventionists (e.g., removing the child from the room)
as the sole intervention approach. These procedures only serve
the purpose of ensuring the safety of the child and others. If
a team develops or uses safety net procedures with a child, a
full behavior support plan should also be developed and implemented.
Click
here to see sample safety net procedures
Click
here to see blank safety net procedures
Plan Development
The support plan
is developed to provide caregivers and interventionists with
a comprehensive set of strategies aimed at both decreasing
occurrences of challenging behavior and promoting growth and
skill development (e.g., communication, adaptive, social, or
academic skills). Support plans are developed by analyzing the
child’s challenging behavior in routines, activities, and/or
interactions with others (i.e., functional assessment data).
It is important that the entire team is involved in the development
of the behavior support plan. If team members assist in the development
of the plan, they are far more likely to be invested in its implementation
and success. One method that might be used by the team to develop
a plan is to use a process of brainstorming. We use chart paper
and the following format to guide the team in moving from the
behavior hypothesis to ideas about prevention strategies, new
skills to teach, and consequence strategies. In a brainstorming
process, all team members are encouraged to share their ideas.
All ideas are put on the chart paper. Once the ideas are listed,
the team discusses the strategies that seem to have the most
promise, will be easy to implement, and fit within the contexts
for intervention. The final step needed to move from brainstorming
to plan development is to review the ideas and select the set
of strategies that will be used in the plan. Once those are determined,
a written plan can be developed.
Click here
to see examples of support plan brainstorming charts
Click here
for a blank support plan brainstorming chart
The most
effective behavior support plans are ones that are both based
on the
functional assessment information and “fit” with
the lifestyles, values, and skills of caregivers who will be
implementing the plan. Behavior support plans should be written
in language that is easy to understand, and both easy to use
and remember. More importantly, plans should incorporate both
long- and short-term support strategies developed from knowledge
of the child’s lifestyle and the vision created for the
child in the person-centered planning meeting. What this means
is that plans need to be designed for daily use—that is,
components must fit into the child’s natural routines
and structure of the classroom or family.
Action Plans
Once each
of the behavior support plan components has been developed and
agreed upon by team members, the final step is to develop an action
plan outlining the specific objectives and corresponding steps
to be taken to ensure the plan will be implemented as intended.
Completing the action plan is largely an exercise of organization—one
where the team specifies its needs, the specific steps to be taken,
the person(s) responsible for completing the steps, the anticipated
date of completion, and any follow-up actions to be taken in order
to accurately implement the team’s behavior support plan
(Hieneman et al., 1999). Once complete, the team is ready to begin
implementation of their plan.
Click
here to see a sample action planning form
Click
here for blank action planning form
Behavior Support Plans
Once the
action planning forms are completed and a crisis management plan
is developed, the behavior support plan should be finished. While
the outcomes associated with the implementation of the plan will
still need to be monitored, this stage of the PBS process is concluded.
Click
here to view sample behavior support plan (Jackson)
Click
here to view sample behavior support plan (Ashley)
References
Cooper, J.
O., Heron, T. E., & Heward, W. L. (1987). Applied Behavior
Analysis. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Hieneman,
M., Nolan, M., Presley, J., De Turo, L., Roberson, W., & Dunlap,
G. (1999). Facilitator’s guide: Positive behavioral
support. Positive Behavioral Support Project, Florida Department
of Education.
