The person
Health, communication, regulation, disability, strengths, needs, history, identity and preferences.
Our approach
We start with the person, but we don’t stop with the person.
Behaviour makes more sense in context. CBChange uses a Therapeutic Behaviour Support approach to understand what is happening for the person, around the person, and between the different parts of everyday life.
Look beyond the incident.
Behaviour can be important and sometimes urgent. But an incident rarely tells the whole story. We may need to consider health, disability, communication and regulation alongside relationships, support responses, routines, organisational arrangements, environments and life circumstances.
The people
Relationships, trust, family and community, supporter responses, connection and the way people respond together.
The support system
Plans, routines, staffing, coordination, expectations, leadership, services and organisational conditions.
Everyday settings
Home, school, community, work and other environments where participation, safety and belonging are experienced.
Therapeutic Behaviour Support
From behaviour to possibility.
Our aim is not only to reduce difficult behaviour. We also look for the conditions that can help someone feel safer, build more secure relationships, develop capability and choice, participate more fully and experience a stronger sense of belonging.
What would a better life look like? That question helps keep the person’s desired future visible when immediate problems are demanding attention.
Use the knowledge that fits the situation
No single theory explains every complex situation.
Depending on the person and setting, our work may draw on established knowledge from positive behaviour support and functional assessment, disability and communication practice, trauma-informed and relational approaches, mental-health and psychological practice, strengths and quality-of-life approaches, health information, restrictive-practice reduction and organisational or systems practice.
Behaviour & learning
Positive behaviour support, functional assessment, skill development and environmental change.
Disability & communication
Cognition, adaptive functioning, neurodevelopment, sensory needs, communication access and supported decision-making.
Trauma, relationships & wellbeing
Safety, trust, co-regulation, attachment, mental health, strengths, quality of life and meaningful participation.
Systems & specialist knowledge
Team and organisational practice, health information, restrictive-practice reduction and specialist findings relevant to the person’s context.
Where specialist disciplines are required — for example psychiatry, speech pathology, neuropsychology or forensic risk assessment — we seek to integrate their findings rather than replace their expertise.
Identity, culture & lived experience
Who a person is — and what they have lived through — matters.
Identity, culture, language, faith, family, community, history and place can shape how behaviour, safety, relationships and support are experienced. Lived experience can also include disability, trauma, exclusion, institutional or service experiences, justice involvement, relationships, strengths and the ways a person has learned to understand themselves and the world around them.
We seek to understand what matters to the person, what has shaped the current situation, and what culturally safe, respectful and meaningful support looks like for them.
For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, this may include the importance of Country, kinship, family, community, cultural identity and culturally safe relationships. We do not assume that culturally safe practice can be defined by us alone; it requires listening, partnership and respect for the person and community involved.
Behind the practice
A structured way of bringing complexity together.
CBChange practitioners are supported by the BASIC System Model of Therapeutics (BMT), which helps organise information about the person, relationships, systems and settings into a coherent therapeutic formulation. People using BSP Select do not need to learn BMT to benefit from the way it informs our reasoning.
What might help?
The response should fit the situation.
Sometimes the next step is a Behaviour Support Practitioner. Sometimes it is consultation, a plan, team development, transition support or changes around the person.