Working With Staff to Promote Positive Behavior Support: Recommendations and Common Mistakes

1. Working With Staff to Promote Positive Behavior Support: Recommendations and Common Mistakes Dennis H. Reid, Ph.D., BCBA

2. Background Carolina Behavior Analysis & Support Ctr. • Consulting • Service • Supervision • Research

3. Evidence-Based Consulting and Supervision • Why evidence-based? • Key part of PBS with students … should extend to working with staff • Importance well understood, but not always practiced well • Illustrated by issues faced by consultants • Illogical when considering “no bad students . . .” • Qualification: default procedure

4. Importance of Staff Acceptance • Lack of staff acceptance of the consultant or his/her recommendations often leads to failure • Behavioral consultants have a poor history of acceptance by nonbehavioral practitioners • Underlying PBS values: application with staff • The nature of consultation and supervision or management

5. Management(as defined in Webster’s 1976) • To train (a horse) in its paces • To control the movement or behavior of; handle; manipulate • To have charge of; direct • To handle or use carefully • To make docile or submissive • To get a person to do what one wishes by skill, tact, flattery, etc.

6. Behavioral Outcome Management • Select student outcome • Specify staff performance • Train • Monitor • Support • Correct • Evaluate

7. Identifying Behavioral Targets • When working with schools, consultants have two client groups: school staff and consumers • Need evidence-based approaches for student behavior change and working with staff

8. Train Target Staff Skills • Performance-based • Competency-based Behavioral Skills Training

10. Staff Training Steps • 1. Explain rationale • 2. Describe skills • 3. Provide written summary • 4. Demonstrate skills • 5. Trainee practice with feedback • 6. Repeat #s 4 & 5 until competency

11. Bottom-Line Rule of Staff Training • Training is not complete until staff demonstrate proficiency in routine work site.

12. Behavioral Outcome Management • Select consumer outcome • Specify staff performance • Train • Monitor • Support • Correct • Evaluate

13. Making Monitoring Acceptable • Reid & Parsons (1995). Comparing choice and questionnaire measures of the acceptability of a staff training procedure. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 28, 95-96.

14. Making Monitoring Acceptable • Greet staff upon entering work site • Briefly explain reason for monitoring • Use common sense re proceeding • Provide feedback quickly • Acknowledge staff upon departing • Also pertains to any consultant visit

15. Behavioral Outcome Management • Select consumer outcome • Specify staff performance • Train • Monitor • Support • Correct • Evaluate

16. Supportive Management • Set the occasion for proficient staff performance • Positively support/reinforce proficient performance

17. Feedback Protocol • Parsons & Reid (1995). Training residential supervisors to provide feedback for maintaining staff teaching skills with people who have severe disabilities. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 28, 317-322.

18. Feedback Protocol 1. Begin with positive or empathetic statement 2. Identify skills performed correctly 3. Identify skills performed incorrectly 4. Specify how to change/improve incorrect performance 5. Solicit questions 6. Describe next actions 7. End with positive or empathetic statement

19. Corrective Management • Identify correct performance • Identify incorrect performance • Specify how to change/improve incorrect performance • Systems and overall environmental considerations

20. Summary: Importance of Positive and Evidence-Based Ways of Working With Staff • Review of importance of positive ways of working with staff • If not evidence-based, we as consultants and supervisors often work hard but flounder . . .

21. If we do not use evidence-base approaches to working with staff we often resort to . . . • “The successful innovator uses charisma, unflappable poise, humor, empathic assertiveness, a sense of timing, flattery, cajolery, persistence, bird-dogging, perceptiveness, and shrewdness.” • (Liberman, AIDD, 1983, 3, pg. iii)

22. Summary: Evidence-Based Ways of Working with Staff • Specify desired student outcomes and corresponding staff behavior • Provide performance- and competency-based training • Monitor acceptably • Support and correct performance • AN EVOLVING TECHNOLOGY