All our Behaviour Support Practitioners have a tertiary qualification and are registered practitioners with the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission. We offer flexible services and can provide behaviour support at your home, across preschools, schools or other community settings, or at group homes and residential facilities.

Our Behavioural therapists work alongside speech and language pathologists, occupational therapists, and school teachers to deliver evidence-based behaviour therapy. The field of applied behavioural analysis is widely recognised internationally. Once we get to know the child and his or her strengths and skills, we will design an individualized therapy program. Our team have skills in using a combination of teaching strategies and Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT).

What is Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA)?

Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) is the application of learning principles, to improve social behaviours. Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA) is the leading practice for treating children with autism spectrum disorder. Our therapy interventions are designed to increase positive behaviours, teach new skills and generalise behaviour to new environments including:

• social skills, communication, reading and academics
• adaptive living skills, including gross and fine motor skills, eating and food preparation, toileting, dressing, personal self-care, domestic skills, time and punctuality, money and value, home and community skills, work skills

 

What is Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT)?

Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) is an effective treatment approach for a range of mental and emotional health issues. It is a combination of two therapies: "Cognitive therapy" and "Behaviour Therapy". Combining these strategies are likely to bring about positive and immediate changes in the person’s quality of life. CBT is used to treat a range of behaviour problems including:

• anxiety, low self-esteem
• uncontrollable anger
• emotional or behavioural problems in children or teenagers
• social skills and relationship problems

Are our methods effective?

Over the past 35 years research has demonstrated the effectiveness of both ABA and CBT with:

• children and adults with mental illness, developmental disabilities and learning disorders
• a range of different carers (parents, teachers and staff)
• settings (schools, homes, institutions, group homes, and hospitals), and
• behaviours (language; social, academic, leisure and functional life skills; aggression, self-injury, oppositional and stereotyped behaviours)

These methods are proven effective in at least these ways:

• increasing positive behaviours (e.g. reinforcement increases appropriate social behaviour)
• teaching new skills (e.g., systematic instruction and reinforcement procedures teach functional life skills, communication skills, or social skills)
• keeping learnt behaviours going (e.g., maintaining and generalising social skills, teaching self-control and self-monitoring);
• transferring a learnt behaviour from one situation or response to another
• to limit the occurrence of inappropriate behaviours (e.g., modifying the learning environment); and reducing inappropriate behaviours (e.g., self-injury or stereotypy and echolalia).

How do we measure outcomes?

Measuring outcomes in therapy is important. What matters the most when setting a goal for therapy is defining the problem well enough, so improvements are measurable. For example, “aggression” defined in a measurable way becomes “attempts, episodes or occurrences of biting pinching or pulling hair”.

Improvement can be seen by measurement of the behaviour problem first, before any treatment occurs, and then again after treatment has occurred. A pre- and post- comparison will develop a reliable understanding of what has worked in therapy. Your therapist will help you to develop a list of goals you wish to achieve from therapy and can provide evidence of ongoing need and progress in therapy to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) at the time of your plan review.