KIPBS Staff Development Newsletter, Volume 1, Issue 2

This article introduces an assessment tool that can be used to gather information about the strengths and needs of your organization's current staff development system. In Part One, four different types of staff development strategies were described:

Awareness Level Training- Short summaries of positive behavior support (PBS) can be useful in a variety of situations. New staff may need a brief review of major PBS principals before beginning more intensive training. Teams that are beginning the PBS planning process are often introduced to PBS before beginning the functional behavioral assessment process. In other situations, an awareness level introduction is used to brief agency directors or board members and to describe why it is important to invest in PBS staff development efforts.

Universal Training- Some types of PBS interventions are useful for all children and adults with disabilities and can be implemented in order to prevent problem behavior. Examples of universal interventions include person-centered strategies such as prompting communication, encouraging choice making, and creating schedules and predictable routines. Universal interventions are often introduced in preservice and inservice training sessions.

Team Training- Becoming a skilled PBS Facilitator requires intensive time and training. An effective strategy for teaching to mastery includes the use of mentor who already has expertise in PBS to provide ongoing support and guidance over a period of time. It is important to identify how many PBS Facilitators are needed within an agency and to make sure that there will be continuity in staff development efforts even when significant staff turn-over occurs.

Mentoring Individual Facilitators- PBS Facilitators teach the teams that form around a child or adult to implement PBS. Training materials are designed to teach each element of the PBS implementation, allow team members to spend time collecting data, and provide support to family or staff members who will be learning to implement interventions with the assistance of a person with behavioral expertise. PBS plans must be a good fit for the individuals who will implement the interventions. One important way to ensure that these interventions are a good fit is to provide onsite training and support.

The four different types of staff development strategies provide a comprehensive view of training needs within an organization. Including a variety of training options within a staff development system helps create a positive and proactive environment. Figure one shows how to think about different types of prevention. Primary Prevention is intended to prevent the occurrence of problem behaviors for the majority of children and/or adults supported who may not engage in problem behavior very often. Awareness level training and universal preservice and inservice training prevents problem behavior from escalating.

Preservice and inservice training can also include information about how to identify early signs that a child or adult is at risk for engaging in more serious problem behavior (Secondary Prevention). Inservice training sessions may focus on common setting events that increase the likelihood of problem behavior such as illness, allergies, sleeping problems, major life stressors, or communication systems that are not being used consistently. Tertiary Prevention involves teaching teams to work together to support a child or adult who engages in severe problem behavior and mentoring professionals who will take a lead role in working with teams through the PBS planning process.

Some organizations have unique strengths in preservice and inservice training, especially in areas related to teaching person-centered strategies. The key with all staff development systems is to build on existing strengths, embed ongoing learning opportunities, and improve training approaches that are already in place. The assessment process should include a review of the major instructional strategies that are used. These instructional strategies can include:

• Presentations and dialogue (groups)
• Applied activities
• Self-guided training materials (portfolio)
• Independent reading
• Modeling new strategies
• Onsite mentoring and feedback
• Case study implementation

A first step in the assessment of an organization's staff development system is to form a staff development planning team that includes individuals representing the entire agency. Planning team members include administrators, managers, training personnel, supervisors, direct support staff, individuals with disabilities, and family members or guardians. Management level involvement is critical to the success of staff development planning to ensure communication, resources, and time is available to engage in self assessment and action planning. The first step of the staff development planning team is to create a mission statement and establish effective meeting strategies (schedule regular meeting dates, create ground rules for the meeting, identify the facilitator, time keeper and the person who will record meeting minutes).

Responsibilities of the Planning Team include:

• Conducting a self assessment of training needs
• Developing action plans
• Creating communication strategies so that all staff contribute to the planning process
• Building inservice training into already occurring activities (staff meetings, individual PBS planning processes),
• Creating a timeline for implementing staff development strategies,
• Evaluating progress using data to make decisions, and
• Designing strategies for reinforcing and recognizing staff efforts.

The first step in the self assessment process is to gather information about the staff development system that is in place and to gather information that can be used as a baseline after action planning begins. The Assessment of Staff Development Needs Tool can assist the planning team in gathering information about what strategies are in place and what areas of the current training process can be expanded and improved. The staff development planning team should identify the types of measures that will be helpful in identifying the success of current staff development efforts including evaluations of training completed by staff members, consumers and family members. Other examples of measures that may be used to evaluate staff development efforts are incident report summaries, the number of short-term institutional placements each year, staff stress questionnaires, staff turn-over rates, consumer satisfaction ratings, family stress questionnaires, and training outcome data. Individual PBS outcome data can be included in a staff development assessment process as well.

After completing an assessment of staff development needs, the planning team will need to complete an assessment of technology capacity if a goal is to utilize online resources through the Kansas Institute for Positive Behavior Support or other internet based training materials.

The next newsletter article (Part 3) will describe how to assess technology resource needs within your organization.

Freeman, R., Kimbrough, P., Irvin, L., Smith, C., Zarcone, J., & Tieghi-Benet, M. (2004). Assessing current positive behavior support staff development strategies. Kansas Institute for Positive Behavior Support newsletter. Available: Kipbs Newsletter: Volume 1 Number 2