Behaviour Support
Overview
The Behaviour Support service can be conducted in clinic or conveniently at the family home, school or community setting to suit your child and family’s needs.
This allows the child to feel more comfortable in a familiar setting.
The Behaviour Support program follows a positive behaviour support (PBS) framework to work with children and teens.
This means individualised programs are developed to increase the likelihood of the child demonstrating positive and appropriate behaviours and decreasing or replacing the behaviours of concern.
Suitability
The behaviour support program may be most suitable if your child is struggling with or you want to address any of the following:
Emotional regulation
If you are concerned your child can go from “zero to one hundred” without any prior warning, our developmental educators focus on teaching your child self-management strategies. This typically starts with assisting the child to become aware of the early signs and changes in their body as they feel increasingly heightened and give them alternative ways of managing their anger or frustration.Managing violent or dangerous behaviour escalations
We understand how intimidating, overwhelming and challenging managing a violent or dangerous behavioural escalation can be. Our developmental educators have experience in managing these situations and will be there with you to model de-escalation strategies and support the implementation of all therapeutic suggestions.
This will typically include the development of a ‘crisis management plan’ to ensure recommended response strategies are easily understood, readily accessible, and consistently applied when everyone is feeling overwhelmed.
Absconding (running off/away)
Absconding behaviours can vary in risk to the child, from leaving the school classroom without notice or going outside the household unaccompanied. Our developmental educators will implement strategies to initially ensure the child’s safety, and then focus on addressing the underlying reason for the behaviour.
Assistance navigating and transitioning into education programs
The demands of starting school or transitioning to a new school can be a daunting experience for many children and teens. We can support your child with this transition as they become familiar with the new setting.
Our developmental educators implement implement a supportive approach with education staff, tailoring approaches to suit your child’s learning style so they achieve their potential and successfully negotiate future schooling years.
Making and maintaining peer friendships
Social difficulties may take the form of bullying or difficulties developing and maintaining peer relationships, right through to more pervasive social difficulties that link to a child’s ASD.
Our developmental educators can work with your child to identify what the social skills are that need to be developed further and then target these through play and social scenarios, with the child and the child’s peer groups. This can occur in the home, classroom, school-yard or even in the community.
Teaching daily living and life skills
Individuals with a disability historically have had many barriers preventing them for gaining independence, having choice and access to meaningful social inclusion. Our developmental educators can liaise with you and your child to set and attain individual goals across life domains including, road safety training, public transport training, supermarket training, before and after school routines, self-care and social and community inclusion.
The goals will be developed appropriately for the child’s developmental level, motor skills and will be taught in the way which suits your child’s learning style. Visual resources are typically developed to support learning which may include video modelling, task analysis or visual schedules. Our developmental educators will support you and your child in achieving these goals within your local and wider community, continuously facilitating self-advocacy.
Behaviour support and training with the child’s support networks
Our developmental educators place a strong focus on ensuring therapeutic plans are developed in collaboration with the child’s support networks and are easily understood to ensure consistency in approach and response. This is typically done through the development and implementation of a Behaviour Support Plan.
This document will comprise of important background information, methods of tracking behaviour trends and proactive and reactive strategies. The coaching and review of this document will be done during therapeutic sessions and more formally during meetings.
As a registered NDIS provider for Specialist Behaviour Support (Registration Group 110), Guiding Pathways are authorised to develop Behaviour Support Plans with Restrictive Practices and undertake Functional Behaviour Assessments.