Positive Behavior Support training (PBS): The RAID® Approach.
The RAID® approach to working with challenging behaviour: a position statement.
The RAID® system is a form of what is now termed positive behavioral support (PBS). The RAID® system was first introduced in 1990, is now on its 10th iteration, and has been attended by over 20,000 professionals so far. Other forms of PBS share many commonalities with it and also some differences in emphasis. Key features of the RAID® approach and other PBS approaches are very well described by Nick Gore et al (2013) as below:
- Prevention and reduction of challenging behavior occurs within the context of increased quality of life, inclusion, participation, and the defense and support of valued social roles.
- Constructional approaches to intervention design build stakeholder skills and opportunities and eschew aversive and restrictive practices.
- Stakeholder participation informs, implements and validates assessment and intervention practices.
- An understanding that challenging behavior develops to serve important functions for people.
- The primary use of applied behavior analysis to assess and support behavior change.
- The secondary use of other complementary, evidence-based approaches to support behavior change at multiple levels of a system.
- A data-driven approach to decision making at every stage.
- Functional assessment to inform function-based intervention.
- Multicomponent interventions to change behavior (proactively) and manage behavior (reactively).
- Implementation support, monitoring and evaluation of interventions over the long term.
The RAID® approach lays particular emphasis on primary preventative strategies, while also inviting a functional analysis of the challenging behavior when it occurs. Primary preventative strategies are highlighted by RAID’s use of ‘red and green behaviour’ which simultaneously side-steps value judgements on the behaviours concerned while at the same time allowing emphasis on the encouragement of the green behaviours that is in the person’s repertoire or potential. Similarly, the red-green distinction invites discussion (from professionals as much as service users) as to what constitutes green and what constitutes red. ‘Assertiveness’ for example, while not always convenient for the organization, is nevertheless usually a green behaviour.
Equally, functional analysis of the problem behavior is part of the RAID® approach, paying particular attention to avoiding some of the dangers that this can sometimes bring:
- Analysis and discussion of the problem behavior can inadvertently highlight the behavior in question sometimes in an unhelpful way, in that the person in question can become defined by the problem behaviour.
- For staff, the emphasis on pro-active encouragement of adaptive behavior for the person in question tends to be more energising and morale-boosting than the ‘reactivity’ that functional analysis implies. (On the other hand, staff do need to know how to analyze, and subsequently respond to, specific challenging behaviours.)
- When it is necessary to perform a functional analysis of the problem behaviour, the RAID® approach emphasizes the necessity of continuing to seek out and develop the positives the person possesses, thereby combining the two important strategies.
- Because the RAID® approach emphasizes the importance of primary preventative strategies, it can continue enthusiastically even in the absence of the problem behaviour. This gets around the paradox that might otherwise occur whereby you have a strategy for dealing with a problem behavior that relies on the problem behavior occurring.
In summary, the RAID® approach is a very positive form of PBS which, while understanding and analysing the problem behavior and its function for the person concerned, also concentrates on nurturing and developing incompatible appropriate behaviour, so it gradually displaces the disruptive behaviour. In this way it produces a positive and effective team approach that can easily be explained to patients, friends or family, improves morale and provides an excellent service for service users, who in turn identify with it and value it.
Reference: Gore, N. J., P. McGill, et al. (2013). "Definition and scope for positive behavioral support." International Journal of Positive Behavioral Support 3(2): 14-23.
The RAID® Course. The positive approach to working with disturbed and challenging behavior.
A 3-day course.
A relentlessly positive approach to working with disturbed and challenging behavior.
The 3-day RAID® course is a leading positive psychology approach for tackling disturbed and challenging behavior at source: over 20,000 professionals have attended it. It is a comprehensive approach which teaches staff a philosophy and practice not only to deal with disturbed and challenging behavior when it occurs, but also to prevent it by tackling it at source. Staff feel pleased to share a unified system and to know what they are doing and why they are doing it, while clients delight in a relentlessly positive and empowering approach. The essence of the RAID® approach is to play down disturbed and challenging behavior as far as safety allows, and to nurture and develop positive behavior so that it systematically overwhelms and displaces the challenging behaviour.
RAID® Centres of Excellence.
This is a major undertaking where organizations seek recognition that they are implementing RAID® principles outstandingly well. It can also be awarded ‘by acclaim’ to organizations that merit it.
