Positive Behaviour Support series Workshop 2: Functional Behaviour Analysis

Positive Behaviour Support Series 2: Functional Behaviour Analysis

Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) is the gold standard approach to supporting people with disability who exhibit behaviours of concern. PBS practitioners need to be competent in conducting functional behaviour assessment and develop data-based PBS plans with a central focus on improved relationships and quality of life for individuals presenting with behaviours of concern. 

The series covers the core elements of PBS that are transferrable across all settings, including home, schools, disability support services, residential support settings, aged care, hospitals and mental health services.

The process of gathering data, developing a functional hypothesis and testing hypotheses is crucial to a Positive Behaviour Support interventions. This workshop will provide practical information about direct and indirect behaviour assessment as well as how to use your data to generate and test hypotheses. This includes learning about setting events, antecedents, discriminative stimuli and reinforcement, all of which are key in a PBS plan. Workshop 2 includes case studies and small group activities that will give you experience in collecting data and applying it to a PBS plan.

Who is this workshop for?

• Allied health professionals
• Psychologists
• Nurses and Nurse Practitioners (including Mental Health Nurses and Mental Health Nurse Practitioners) 
• Support coordinators
• Case managers
• Disability service managers
• Senior support staff
• Therapy assistants

Learning outcomes

Workshop 2 will cover the following topics:

• Prioritising and defining challenging behaviours
• Functional behaviour assessment
• Direct and indirect assessment
• Formulation
• Functional analysis
• Identifying functionally equivalent replacement behaviour (if applicable)

About the organiser 

Dr Lee Cubis is a Clinical Psychologist with 22 years of experience working in the disability sector where he has delivered frontline services to individuals with moderate to severe behaviours of concern. This includes work with people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Intellectual Disability, Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) and neurodegenerative disease (e.g. dementia, Multiple Sclerosis, Huntington's Disease). Lee works with individuals, families and formal support workers across university, private and community ABI settings. He regularly runs professional development training to the disability support sector in the areas of Positive Behaviour Support and adapting interventions for people with cognitive disability. Lee is also an active researcher in disability and regularly presents at national and international conferences.

What is the Positive Behaviour Support series?

The development of the Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) series was inspired by feedback from practitioners in the field receiving referrals for PBS, but were not sure if they have the expertise to provide adequate and appropriate PBS interventions. There are many requirements to implement PBS interventions to a satisfactory standard, and although people have great expertise in their fields (e.g. developing strategies), many also identify there is areas for improvement (e.g. functional behaviour assessment). When done well, PBS interventions are an effective way to reduce behaviours of concern and improve quality of life in people with disability.

The PBS series was designed to allow people to focus on the various areas of PBS that they feel they most need the professional development. The workshops are designed to be modular (i.e. you can pick individual workshops to attend, or attend all if you wish). Each workshop will be a full day of learning and include practical skills and resources to take away and use in your own practice.

The workshops include a focus on the following:

Workshop 1: Fundamental Skills in Positive Behaviour Support

Workshop 2: Functional Behaviour Analysis

Workshop 3: Positive Behaviour Support interventions

Workshop 4: Writing a Positive Behaviour Support Plan