What is Positive Behavior Support?
“Positive behavior support is an applied science that uses educational methods to expand an individual’s behavior repertoire and systems change methods to redesign an individual’s living environment to first enhance the individual’s quality of life and, second, to minimize his or her problem behavior” (Carr, et al., 2002, p. 4).
Such support encompasses all strategies from an interdisciplinary perspective that increase a person’s competence in community based and inclusive settings. The essential goal of PBS is to eliminate the need for challenging behavior by increasing the person’s ability to meet his or her own needs. PBS has evolved from the philosophy and practice in three important sources in the disability services field. They are applied behavior analysis, the normalization/inclusion movement, and person-centered values. PBS includes these nine essential components:
