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‘Working Positively with Behaviours that Challenge’: A Short Course

This course is aimed at teaching staff, family members and carers to develop and implement comprehensive, non-aversive behavioural support plans for people who present with challenging behaviours.

A Model of Multi-Element Behavioural Support: Features of the model, proactive versus reactive strategies, understanding challenging behaviour, range of outcomes, reasons why people punish, definition of non-aversive, a rationale for non-aversive intervention, research evidence on the effectiveness of non-aversive alternatives.

Environmental Accommodations: Rationale for environmental adaptation; the physical environment; the interpersonal environment; the programmatic environment; activity sampling, choice, guidelines for implementing pictorial sequencing.

Skills Teaching: General skills teaching, low inference training, self esteem and behavioural support, definition of function, types of function, functionally equivalent skills teaching, co-trainer prompting, functionally related skills teaching, coping and tolerance skills teaching, progressive relaxation.

Direct Interventions: Differential reinforcement of other behaviour (DRO), fixed interval, reset variants, free access rule, satiation, Differential reinforcement of low rate behaviours (DRL), Differential reinforcement of alternative behaviours (Alt-R), component analysis of reinforcement strategies and cautions when using differential reinforcement strategies.

Reactive Strategies: Active listening, redirection, facilitated relaxation, facilitated problem solving, facilitated communication, stimulus change.

Crisis Prevention: A model of crisis development, non-verbal behaviour, para-verbal communication, staff fear and anxiety, the verbal escalation continuum, personal safety techniques, post-vention techniques.

Behavioural Assessment: Role of comprehensive behavioural assessment,background information, to include, referral, reasons for referral, issues affecting referral, background information, diagnosis, physical characteristics, cognitive functioning, sensory communication assessment, general skills, social skills, leisure skills, family history, ecological analyses, health and medical status, previous interventions, mediator analysis and motivational analysis.

Functional Assessment: to include, description of behaviour, behavioural definition, course, frequency, behavioural recording, historical analysis, antecedent analysis, consequence analysis, motivational analysis, impressions and analysis of meaning.

Intervention Development: Develop incident analysis sheets, ABC worksheets, based on hypothesis of function. Test the function of the behaviour using incident analysis sheets, checks for counter evidence.

Implementation Factors: Consent, team meetings, behaviour recording, graphing, mediation systems, periodic service review, consultant style.

It involves 8 full days of lectures (9:30 a.m.- 5:30p.m) run over a 12 month period. The sessions will be mainly on Fridays.

This course is intended for people working directly with individuals who present with challenging behaviour and/or parents of children who present with behavioural challenges. The course assignment requires completion of one Comprehensive Behavioural Assessment and Intervention plan with an individual with challenging behaviour.

Applicants must ideally have at least one-year experience in the field of Social Care with an emphasis on Challenging Behaviourand/or qualification from a recognised academic institution(Certificate/Diploma/Degree).

The fee is €1600 for participants, which includes all folders, materials and a core text

Acceptance:

Once an application form is received it will be reviewed and the applicant will be called for interview. The student will be notified of acceptance and an information packet will be sent.

The student will be registered on the data-base and a file established for all further correspondence.

The Role of the applicant’s supervisor:

Each applicant will require the support of their immediate supervisor in supporting and monitoring their work. The supervisor may be invited to attend a half-day workshop on the ‘Supervision of Multi-Element Behaviour Support’.

The course is assessed by continuous assessment using a range of methods, including post-tests, verbal presentations, written reports, video of field -work and supervisor audit.

A certificate for completing ‘Working Positively with Behaviours that Challenge’: A short-course’ is awarded by Limerick Institute of Technology

This short-course qualifies for 10 ECTS (European Credit Transfer System), and can be applied as partial fulfilment (10credits) of a Masters Degree in Social Studies.

This course will extend the skills of students in the area of supporting people with challenging behaviours. The student will also be eligible for membership with the Irish Association for Behavioural Support.