Association for Behavior Analysis International

Individuals who serve youth and adults with disabilities and/or those who engage in challenging behavior often lack the necessary skills to implement reinforcement-based strategies. Research has shown that creating a positive and supportive environment is critical in enhancing the treatment outcomes for those receiving behavior management services. This symposium highlights the effectiveness of staff training interventions to improve the implementation of evidence-based practices across various settings. The first presentation will review the impact of a crisis management training program to increase pre-kindergarten educators’ knowledge and ability to effectively implement behavior analytic strategies. The second presentation will describe the methodology and outcomes associated with training staff to identify functional consequences associated with juvenile justice involved youths’ problematic and replacement behaviors. The third presentation will describe how behavior skills training (BST) and tactile prompts was used to increase positive interactions among staff and youth in a residential care facility. Finally, the fourth presentation will illustrate the use of text message prompts to increase staff’s use of behavior-specific praise in an adult residential care facility. Taken together, these presentations underscore the importance and effectiveness of staff training to support the needs of youth and adults across educational, juvenile justice, and residential care settings.

There is a need for training staff within juvenile justice residential facilities to replace punitive consequences for problem behaviors, like lengthening time incarcerated, with non-punitive, function-based interventions focused on building skills. Youth time incarcerated is said to be determined by progress in mental health treatment, however a youth’s length of stay is truly determined by compliance with the facility’s Behavior Management System. A large part of this system is tracking when youth engage in behaviors deemed inappropriate, dangerous, or unsafe. Any staff witnessing the behavior can write an incident report. After this occurs, the youth's treatment team meets and determines a “consequence” (more often than not, an attempt at punishment) which are then tracked in the Behavior Management System. In order to increase the use of function-based interventions instead of punitive responses to problem behaviors, we trained staff to identify behavior functions and assess for potential deficits and learning opportunities with the goal of decreasing problem behavior by increasing engagement in replacement behavior. Data on the number of incident reports of problem behavior will be compared before and after training. Individual data on youth engagement, and opportunities to engage in replacement behavior will be compared pre and post intervention.