Positive Behaviour Support

Improving quality of life and reducing behaviour that challenges

About 1 person in 8 with a learning disability displays challenging behaviour which may lead to injuries, psychotropic medication and disruption to family life, employment and education.

At Dimensions we use Positive Behaviour Support to help people improve their quality of life, reduce challenging behaviour, and eliminate restraint as a management strategy.

Our Behaviour Support team focuses on developing person-centred strategies that help people to lead full lives in the community and avoid more costly interventions.

Our approach combines years of experience with best practice in the field, including NICE guidance and the PBS Competence Framework.

We work closely with relatives and support teams, providing hands on training to ensure they have the skills they need to implement a person’s behaviour support programme.

In addition to standard trigger reduction strategies, we have worked hard to develop more technical strategies aimed at teaching people new skills.

Teaching people the skills they need to live the life they want

At Dimensions, we employ a team of Consultant Behaviour Analysts who are trained in sophisticated behavioural skills-teaching techniques.

This enables consultants to teach the person what to do when they encounter a trigger to challenging behaviour.

This approach has many advantages:

• It is constructive – that is, it adds to a person’s skills set and increases independence
• It is the best way to bring about long-term positive changes in behaviour
• It leads to cost savings through a reduction in staffing levels.

Decades of research on human behaviour have taught a number of important things, chief amongst them that most behaviours described as challenging are learned.

Our experience has shown that people can learn positive alternatives to challenging behaviour, communicating more effectively and leading happier lives.