ABSTRACT

Individuals with intellectual disability and challenging behaviour are a vulnerable group. They are vulnerable in the sense that they are over-represented in large residential settings (Borthwick-Duffy, Eyeman and White, 1987), often without the most basic assessment and intervention services (Taggart and McConkey, 2001). The considerable variability in the treatment that such individuals receive is due, in part at least, to a lack of coherent policy in the field and to a frequent failure on the part of services and professionals to implement evidence-based interventions. In this chapter, we present a model of intervention, Positive Behavioural Support, that may help to ameliorate these outcomes. Excellent overviews of the emerging literature on the efficacy of positive behavioural support have been provided by Emerson (2001) and by Carr, Horner, Turnbull and Marquis (1999). Meta-analytic studies on treatment effectiveness (Didden, Duker and Korzilius, 1997), control group studies (e.g. Grey and McClean, 2004) and expert consensus each attest to the effectiveness of behavioural interventions for this group. The main purpose of this chapter is to provide practical examples of behavioural interventions and to offer guidelines on their implementation.