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Positive Behaviour Support?

Jenny Butterfly

I feel confused and conflicted about PBS.  On the one hand, I'm in a parents' group where it's spoken about very enthusiastically and it's emphasised that underlying triggers and feelings are very much taken into account, not just surface behaviours.  Plus also that there is a lot of consideration of others' behaviours too - parents, friends, carers etc - and the environment as well.  On the other, it seems to stem from ABA and discussion of it is, at the very least, frowned upon in several autistic-led groups where I really trust the information provided.  

But then in this house we're desperate.  Might it help with longstanding issues around burnout, anger, total withdrawal etc?  I just don't know.  Perhaps I'll do the short parents' course to get more detail.  I can take it all with a pinch of salt and get a chance to ask more questions, after all. 

Does anyone here have any positive experiences of it?  It seems to be talked up by parents and the NAS.  But then there's this (which makes me stop in my tracks) -

 amase.org.uk/.../

Parents

  • JennyButterfly,

    Not all ABA is actually ABA, some use ABA loosely for insurance. The underlying intention is still “autism conversion therapy” as the father of ABA, Ivar Lovaas, claimed autistic people are not humans.

    With autism been a spectrum what therapy helps one will not help all. The problem is “ableism,” autistic people are still being stripped of human rights and put in painful situations. When substituting a behaviour the autistic one find the behaviour chosen by others which is why they are “normative.” From my observation, therapists who concentrated on the child’s needs forgetting about normality tend to be the minority who give positive feedback, the ones who give negative feedback like feeling abused had therapists normalising the child and not enough concentration or acknowledgement of their needs.

    ABA workers are not qualified to help autistic people, during their training they are not taught about autism so they often unknowingly give harmful treatments, like making someone hypersensitive to light stay bombarded by lights in shopping centres teaching life skills. ABA is unethical, because of their ignorance of internal constructs like neurocognitive functioning they have an incomplete ethics code, following an incomplete ethics code is unethical, they work outside of their scope.

    ABA is to be approached with extreme caution, if the child shows any signs of distress they must stop and work at the child’s pace. Make sure their needs are acknowledged and observe the practitioner to make sure they’re not ableist as that’s what the majority tend to be.

Reply

  • JennyButterfly,

    Not all ABA is actually ABA, some use ABA loosely for insurance. The underlying intention is still “autism conversion therapy” as the father of ABA, Ivar Lovaas, claimed autistic people are not humans.

    With autism been a spectrum what therapy helps one will not help all. The problem is “ableism,” autistic people are still being stripped of human rights and put in painful situations. When substituting a behaviour the autistic one find the behaviour chosen by others which is why they are “normative.” From my observation, therapists who concentrated on the child’s needs forgetting about normality tend to be the minority who give positive feedback, the ones who give negative feedback like feeling abused had therapists normalising the child and not enough concentration or acknowledgement of their needs.

    ABA workers are not qualified to help autistic people, during their training they are not taught about autism so they often unknowingly give harmful treatments, like making someone hypersensitive to light stay bombarded by lights in shopping centres teaching life skills. ABA is unethical, because of their ignorance of internal constructs like neurocognitive functioning they have an incomplete ethics code, following an incomplete ethics code is unethical, they work outside of their scope.

    ABA is to be approached with extreme caution, if the child shows any signs of distress they must stop and work at the child’s pace. Make sure their needs are acknowledged and observe the practitioner to make sure they’re not ableist as that’s what the majority tend to be.

Children
  • in reply to Daniel

    Yes, I think that, especially in the States, various "therapies" are described as ABA in order to get past the insurers.  But is the PBS approach often promoted here in the UK just a more insidious version of the same thing?  

    In the parents' group I'm in, PBS is described as very "person-centred" but I'm left wondering whether they mean "person-centred" in the same way as a Rogerian therapist might, or whether it just means that "support" is clustered around what are deemed to be the person's needs, and not necessarily with their agreement.  

    Is PBS to be approached witht he same degree of caution?  I find it confusing.