documents to have as a person with a disability positive behavior support plans
So these are very controversial documents in that if you
don’t have all the support workers on the same page it can be very difficult
for people to stick to them and unethical support workers will use them against
some people but when used properly are very effective in reducing unwanted
behaviours through a variety of means and
this is where restrictions come into play as they need to be used in conjunction
with other things such as therapy and they can only be implemented by a
positive behaviour support specialist and often a support worker will need to
be trained in how to implement them safely and positively that helps
support the self-development of the client and stops the behaviours.
However with any challenging behaviours we see that it is
only used when people are unable to use other means to deescalate challenging
and difficult behaviours’ and often these are a learnt behaviour and this can be behaviours’ such as
manipulation of a support worker, through guilt, hiding things and then
accusing others of stealing them, understanding that these attention seeking behaviour’s
can be broken but it takes along time and the premise of a positive behaviours
support plan is that we aim to have the “bad,” behaviours ignored so they don’t
get the same reward out of the behaviour and turn it into a positive behaviours
as well, and we see that the steps need to be written down as when a positive
support plan is not implemented properly we see that this can cause further
trauma as most of the difficult and challenging behaviour’s can simply be
reframed as trauma behaviours or attention seeking as often people where
punished without explanation for behaviours that are actually a part of there disability.
Now I am not saying that this is permission to use your
disability as an excuse but exactly the opposite of own bad behaviours I am not
talking about behaviours that are directly related to someone’s disability but
more like an autistic person stimming, or a person with Adhd needing to
fidget, but we then can in a polite way call them out on there directness and
bluntness as this is not how we do things or calling out a person with ADHD for
forgetting things and being late as there is the scaffolding that they can do as an
adult to prevent things like this from happening, such as using reminders and asking a support worker
for help or working with appropriate therapists to put the supports in place
such as using a google hub or having a
meal delivery service.
But in linking this back to a positive behaviours support
plan we see that they are a specialised document that documents the restrictions
that can be put in place to protect the person from themselves or from harming
others and they are things like environmental
restrictions and these are in some ways sensible things because they are also considered risk minimization, so having restrictive access to
parts of a building such as an office or a bedroom, and often in a disability
setting or a sil house we see that they would have confidential paperwork their
and this protects peoples privacy.
The basic tenants of a restrictive practice and then NDIS is
very much moving away from them is that they are to be used as an absolute last resort as they do restrict people’s
movement and freedoms, but in some cases, this is needed.
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