“Positive Behavior Supports” (PBS) promotes children’s healthy social and emotional well being.

Positive Behavioral Supports can assist parents and caregivers with various strategies and interventions that can be used to help address and prevent challenging behaviors in their children. One goal of PBS is to replace disruptive behaviors by increasing understanding and awareness of these behaviors and promoting more socially acceptable alternative behaviors. PBS is widely used in childcare settings and schools and has been endorsed by the U.S. Department of Education for Special Education Programs. PBS seeks to increase children’s social and emotional well-being through the use of a Public Health Model with a specific focus on prevention and timely intervention.

In the school and home environment, PBS promotes predictable routines and the learning of social skills through improvements in self-regulation, cooperation, and social problem solving among children. Parents, caregivers, and family members having children with persistent challenging behaviors create a “team” which then works together to identify challenging behaviors, develop a support plan and promote healthy change. Recognizing that the relationship between child and primary caregivers is the key to such healthy change, the family becomes the center of this new team. One of the first tasks of the team is to participate in a “functional assessment”, which helps discover those factors contributing to the child’s behavioral challenges and problems. At that point, strategies can then be created to address these factors, improve understanding for all involved in caring for the child, and help to guide the child down the road to greater social and emotional well-being.