Supporting People With Challenging Behaviour
Supporting people with challenging behaviour can be very demanding for families and professionals alike. I have written the guides and information sheets here using my personal experience of supporting children with SLD, Autism, epilepsy, and associated challenging behaviours.
Introduction
Why do people engage in challenging behaviour?
Typically, challenging behaviour is displayed by people who have not developed communication and social skills that allow them to get their everyday needs met. So challenging behaviour develops as the person's only way of:
# Making a request for something that they want - attention, food, drink, help
# Escaping from a situation they find too confusing, or too overwhelming
# Avoiding requests from other people
# Demonstrating under-stimuation or over-stimulation
What can be done about it?
Key to supporting people with challenging behaviour is finding ways to help them to develop their communication and independence. As mentioned above, challenging behaviour typically arises as the easiest way for a person to get their needs met, so we need to find alternative ways for people to communicate or fulfil these needs. Change of this nature can take a long time, and will certainly require changes in the way other people respond to the challenging behaviour. A popular approach for supporting individuals who present challenging behaviour is applied behaviour analysis.
There is much that can be done to treat challenging behaviour.
I'll be adding the following pages to provide more detailed information for specific issues around challenging behaviour:
Quick guide for parents
Understanding the behaviour
Communication
Self-Injurious behaviour
PICA (Eating inedible objects)
Difficult sexual behaviour
Health
Psychiatric disorders
Specialist equipment & safety
Physical Interventions
Using medication to treat challenging behaviour