An effective Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) plan starts with understanding the individual. The right tools can help teams interpret what behaviour may be communicating and use that understanding to shape practical support, build skills and improve quality of life.
PBS plans should be values-driven and centred on inclusion, participation and enablement. Reducing incidents may be one outcome, but it shouldn’t be the sole purpose. This guide looks at what an effective PBS plan needs to include, how teams can use assessment and observation to understand behaviour, and how technology can support ongoing review.
The building blocks of an effective Positive Behaviour Support plan
When designing a PBS plan, start by gathering detailed information on the individual it’s for. Involve the person and, where possible, those who know them well in the assessment process, building a picture of their strengths, needs, and what matters to them. Consider their communication preferences, interests, aspirations and goals, known triggers and what a good life looks like for them.
The core components of a successful PBS plan
|
Component |
What this means in practice |
|
Understanding |
Build a picture of the individual's strengths, needs, preferences, goals, interests, and what may contribute to distress. |
|
Communication |
Understand how the individual communicates and receives information so you can adapt support accordingly. |
|
Engagement |
Create meaningful opportunities for participation, choice, independence and activities that the person values. |
|
Incident management |
Prioritise proactive strategies and give staff clear, personalised guidance for de-escalation and responding safely when incidents occur. |
|
Recovery |
Consider what the individual needs after an incident to feel safe, rebuild trust and recover emotionally. |
|
Consistency |
Make sure everyone supporting the individual understands the plan and can apply its strategies consistently while responding to the person's needs. |
These components often overlap. Communication needs may affect engagement, and the support someone receives after an incident can shape how they respond to a similar situation in future. A PBS plan needs to account for those connections and grow with the person, rather than treating each behaviour as an isolated problem.
Most of the plan should focus on proactive support: what can reduce distress, improve quality of life and make incidents less likely. Staff still need clear guidance on how to respond safely when reactive support is needed.
Once you've gathered this information, translate it into a clear, usable plan that everyone supporting the person can understand. Our Positive Behaviour Support plan template provides a structure for capturing the individual's needs, goals and support strategies.
Understanding the 'why' behind behaviour
When designing PBS plans, avoid jumping straight from behaviour to solution. Observation and assessment help teams understand what may be contributing to a behaviour before choosing a response, so that support is based on the person's needs.
The Motivation Assessment Scale (MAS)
The Motivation Assessment Scale (MAS) is a 16-item questionnaire that considers four potential functions of behaviour: sensory needs, escape or avoidance, attention and access to something tangible. It can help teams develop hypotheses about the possible function of a behaviour, which can then be tested against direct observation and other information gathered during assessment.
Observation in everyday support
Day-to-day observation can reveal valuable information about what a person enjoys, avoids or finds difficult. Trying appropriate activities and recording how the person responds can help teams see what encourages engagement, what doesn't work and where an approach needs adapting.
The ABC Chart
The ABC Chart is another tool for analysing behaviours by systematically recording what happens before (antecedent), during (behaviour), and after (consequence) an event. While an ABC chart records what happened, it doesn't automatically tell us why it happened. Used consistently over time, however, ABC records can help teams spot patterns involving particular activities, transitions, people, communication, demands or sensory environments. Download our ABC chart template.
Other factors may sit outside an ABC record or assessment score. Pain or changes in physical health, communication difficulties and previous experiences can all affect behaviour. Functional assessment should draw on information from different sources.
The working hypothesis will develop as the team gathers more information. It should be tested against what happens in practice and updated when the evidence points somewhere new.
Those learnings need to translate into specific guidance for staff. If the team has noticed that busy transitions are contributing to someone's distress, the plan should be updated to describe what support helps during those transitions. That might include giving the person more time, preparing them for what is happening next or changing when an activity takes place. Staff can then record how the person responds and feed that information back into the plan.
Tools that support the plan, not just document it
The most useful tools help the person communicate, understand what's happening, participate or gain greater control.
Communication Tools
Tools such as Talking Mats, Makaton, visual aids, gestures and physical objects can support people to communicate their needs, preferences and feelings. The person's communication preferences should determine which tools are used.
Creating predictability and understanding
Visual schedules, Social Stories and predictable routines can help people understand what is happening and what to expect, particularly around unfamiliar situations or changes. For example, a Social Story might help someone prepare for a visit to the dentist by setting out what will happen before they arrive.
Environmental adaptations also play an important role in PBS, which we explore in our guide to creating the right environment and team for PBS.
Building skills, not just managing incidents
Skill development should have a clear place in the PBS plan, particularly where it can give someone more independence, choice or control in everyday life.
Larger goals can often be broken into smaller steps, with support reduced as the person becomes more confident and independent. If someone wanted to become more independent in preparing meals, the plan might begin with individual tasks before gradually introducing more complex ones.
Example of skill stacking
-
Step 1: Choose a recipe
-
Step 2: Gather and prepare ingredients
-
Step 3: Follow a recipe for a simple salad with support
-
Step 4: Gradually reduce support and introduce more complex recipes
The pace and steps will be different for every person. Choose skills that connect with goals the person actually values. Download our Subjective Quality of Life template.
The level of support should change with the person's progress too. If they can complete part of an activity independently, update the plan to reflect that rather than continuing to prompt them through every step. Recording where support is still needed can help the team suggest other activities that could develop these skills.
Using data to keep PBS plans relevant
Keep collecting information after the plan goes live. Over time, teams should be able to see whether strategies are helping, whether the person's needs or circumstances have changed and whether they're making progress towards the outcomes that matter to them.
ABC records, incident data and day-to-day observations can all contribute, alongside quality-of-life measures and feedback from the person.
The quality of the information matters as much as the amount collected. Recording that an incident occurred tells you relatively little on its own. Useful records should give teams enough context to understand what was happening before and afterwards, whether existing strategies were used, how the person responded and if similar patterns have appeared elsewhere.
Depending on the individual's goals, progress might look like taking part in more activities, communicating choices more effectively, needing less support with a task or feeling more comfortable in previously difficult situations. Looking at these outcomes alongside behavioural data helps keep focus on quality of life.
Positive behaviour support technology can help by making it easier to record information consistently and review patterns across time, shifts, and settings. Digital records also give different team members access to the same information, so observations from different shifts and settings can form part of the same picture.
Log my Care's PBS feature brings behavioural strategies, goals, risks and behavioural data together in the individual's care record.
Putting the plan into practice
A PBS plan should change as the team learns more about the person, their goals and the support that works for them. Regular observation and review keep that information current.
What happens around the plan matters too. The environment, the confidence of the staff team and the consistency of day-to-day support all affect how well it works in practice. Next, we look at how the environment and team can help PBS work in practice, before exploring how to implement PBS consistently across an organisation.
.png?noresize)