Positive Behavior Support

For years, RSI has been successfully supporting clients with histories of failed placement due to behavioral problems. We believe our success is due in part to an approach we use for resolving problem behaviors: Positive Behavior Support (PBS). The premise of PBS is the belief that the individuals we serve are just that: individuals. RSI believes that building services around their unique qualities, needs, and dreams, in addition to focusing on the positive aspects of the person, is the start to reducing and hopefully eliminating challenging behaviors.

• Definition
• Goals of PBS
• Important Features of PBS

Definition

Positive Behavior Support is a lifestyle approach that enhances quality of life and minimizes problem behavior. This is accomplished by replacing negative behaviors with newly learned skills and proactively removing the trigger events from the person's environment. PBS is an evolutionary approach emerging from applied behavior analysis, normalization/inclusion movement, and person-center values.

Positive Meaning:

learned skills that increase the likelihood of success and personal satisfaction in an individual's academic, employment, social, recreational, community, and family settings

Support Meaning:

• educational methods that can be used to teach, strengthen, and expand positive behavior
• a systems change method that can be used to increase opportunities for the individual to display positive behaviors

Goals of PBS

1. The primary goal of PBS is to assist an individual's lifestyle to evolve in a direction that allows a person to enjoy an improved quality of life for themselves.
2. An important, but secondary, goal is to render problem behavior irrelevant, inefficient and ineffective. This is accomplished by demonstrating that these goals can only be achieved when behaving in a socially acceptable manner, thus reducing or completely eliminating the episodes of problem behaviors.

Important features of PBS

1. A PBS plan requires that procedures be positive and respect the dignity of the person.
2. PBS interventions are individualized and based on an understanding of the person and their environment.
3. Initiating proactive strategies for preventing problems before they occur; emphasis is on prevention.
4. Individuals function as active participants and collaborators with professionals in a process of information exchange, i.e. person centered/directed.
5. Eliminating or minimizing natural rewards for problem behavior,
   and
6. Maximizing natural rewards for appropriate behavior.

The cornerstone of PBS is the design and use of functional (behavioral) assessments to understand what is the cause of an individual's problem behavior. Individuals engage in a behavior because it is functional; it helps them acquire some form of reinforcement. All behavior, whether it is positive or negative, has a purpose. Functional assessment is a process for identifying the events that trigger and maintain problem behavior.