The Assessment Process
Your family member has been referred for an assessment. Before we carry out the assessment we would like you to know what the process of this assessment involves. If you have any questions please feel free to ask your community learning disability health professional.
The Challenging Behaviour PBS Pathway is a Learning Disability Service initiative.
It has been designed to promote equality across all of the Learning Disability services within the Trust.
The aim is to enhance the quality of care offered to the people we support, who present with behaviours that others find challenging. We know that behaviours considered challenging can be very difficult for everyone involved. The effects of these behaviours have a ripple effect and impact upon those close to the person and those responsible for their care.
What is Challenging behaviour?
A person’s behaviour can be defined as “challenging” if it puts them or those around them, including their family members at risk.
Challenging behaviour can also impact on a person’s ability to join in everyday activities and often restricts a person’s choices and freedom.
Challenging behaviour can include self-harm, inappropriate sexualised behaviour, aggression, destructive behaviour, withdrawal and self isolation.
Challenging behaviour is not always a problem for the person, it is often a learned way of coping with the distress of an underlying difficulty.
The ‘Ethos’: Positive Behaviour Support
The Challenging Behaviour PBS Pathway adopts and promotes the principles of Positive Behaviour Support (PBS).
PBS is established as the preferred approach when working with people with learning disabilities who display behaviours that challenge.
PBS focus on what is important for the person.
They aim to enhance quality of life through increased community participation, skill development and reduction in challenging behaviour. This is achieved through non aversive, compassionate and respectful approaches.
Things we would find helpful in our assessment
As part of our assessment we will need to collect information from lots of different sources. These may include structured interviews with the person and people important to the person. This may include you as the named family/carer.
The specific details about what this interview may look like can be discussed directly with the behavioural specialist assigned to your relatives care.
It would also be helpful to observe the person in different settings.
This may include observations at home. Again this can be discussed in more detail directly with your community learning disability health professional assigned to your relatives care.
We may also request duplicate copies of previously completed reports. It would be helpful if you could think about any written documents that you may have received over the years and let your specialist know how they may track down a copy.
We may also request information about the person’s current medication. This is to ensure that their medication is right for them.
Finally, we may ask you to complete some questionnaires / forms about the person. This will be asking about the person’s skills, abilities and the things they do well, in addition to the behaviours that they present that are challenging.
Things we would find helpful in our interventions
Once the assessment is complete we will be making suggestions on what strategies may be helpful to consider.
You will be a pivotal person in helping put these strategies into practice and to collect information on whether these strategies have helped.
Some of the strategies we suggest may need to be altered and changed over time. This is to best meet the changing needs of the person and you as family.
You may have tried lots of different strategies before and some of the strategies we come up with together may look similar to things that may have tried in the past and others completely new.
We will work together to develop strategies that are individually tailored to you as a family.
Some of these strategies may involve looking at the environment and suggesting some changes that may help change the behaviour. These may include visual aids, changing room layout, increasing/decreasing activity levels, types of activities, etc.
Other strategies may involve teaching the person new skills. This may mean that we work with you to help develop these skills too and any other involved carers in these strategies as well. This will allow you to help teach the person new skills. Learning new skills can often take time, especially if these skills are less familiar.
Your community learning disability health professional may ask you to practice these strategies a number of times a day to help the person learn and remember these skills.
Your community learning disability health professional will talk to you in more detail about specific strategies and your vitally important role in maintaining progress.
Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS)
If you have some concerns, questions or need advice on our services, you can contact the Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS) on 0800 234 6088 or you can email the PALS team.
Feeling low and need someone to talk to?
Call 0800 915 4640
Monday to Friday 7pm to 11pm Saturday to Sunday 12pm to Midnight.
Need urgent help?
Call 0800 953 0110 24 hours a day, seven days a week
This leaflet is available in alternative languages and formats upon request. Please speak to a member of our staff to arrange this.