Escuchar PBS Matters

Guest - Dr Matt Brodhead:  Matt is an associate professor at Michigan state University and leader in ethical and professional issues in applied behaviour analysis and autism treatment. Over the past 15 years he's established multiple school-based programmes for children with autism and has provided training to teachers, related service providers and behaviour analysts nationally and internationally. Additionally, he is the author for "Practical Ethics for Effective Treatment of Autism Spectrum Disorder". He has also published over 50 peer reviewed articles, along with a number of book chapters and commentaries in the area of autism, social skill development, functional behaviour assessment, ethics and ABA. He serves as an associate editor for The Journal of Behavioural Education, Behaviour Analysis in Practice and The Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities, and he's on the editorial boards of multiple behaviour analytic journals including JABA. Matt is recognised in the academic community as a leader in the area of ABA treatment of autism and is one of the foremost experts in the areas of ethics and professionalism  =in the practice of ABA. He is also the director of of "---- support" , a service which provides free evidence based support to caregivers of people with autism in the state of Michigan In this episode, Matt, Paddy and Jo give advice to people who are put in situations where their organisation has asked them to (and expects them to) work with people outside their scope of competence. Matt then discusses work regarding the CCC confidence and competence checklist and his 2018 paper: Call For Discussions About Scope of Competence and Behaviour Analysis.  Next, the talk about co-production within systems especially with the family and their wishes, and about training and making progress when becoming a behaviour analyst / over your career as a BCBA. They discuss change within the business and how to handle that (e.g. regarding mental health) and finally talk about growth in the profession.

Guest - Dr Tia martin: Tia is the co-founding director of PBS UK, who have been incorporated for around 7.5 years. Her primary area of working is behaviour analysis in autism and learning disability. She did her PHD at Queen's University Belfast, on behavioural safety and teaching behavioural skills to young people with autism and intellectual disability. In this episode, Tia, Paddy and Jo discuss a survey Tia recently ran regarding job application and recruitment within the field of behaviour support. Tia ran this survey as she wanted to understand what influences peoples decisions to apply for jobs as PBS practitioners, and what can organisations do anything differently to be more successful. She discusses what the survey looked like, the format, how she got it out there, and the of questions she asked. Tia talks about the themes she noticed in the responses from the survey, and what people consider when taking a roll. She then gives some general advice to recruiters, like: how you pitch your job advert, realistic salaries, etc. Finally, Tia offers advice to the people who are going for jobs.

Guest - Debby Austin: Debby is a family carer for her daughter Lucy. She has 30 years experience in NHS as a community physio, has worked in community learning disability teams, and is now the strategic LD workforce development manager for family carers.  Guest - Nick (not sure how to spell last name sorry!!): Nick is a clinical psychologist, behaviour analyst, and lecturer at the Tizard Centre at University of Kent. He was involved in the making of the first State of the Nation report. In this episode, Paddy discusses the State of the Nation report with Debby and Nick, who were both involved in the development of the paper. Paddy, Debby and Nick focus on and converse the importance of co-production, partnership working, and working with families. Debby primarily discusses PBS and how it changed family life for her, and talks about her experience being a part of the group who developed the report. We also hear about Lucy's recent new job role and what she plans to do in the future in this role. Nick describes the methodology of putting the report together and also gives some examples on how to engage with families and understand common challenges they face.

Guest - Professor Richard Hastings: Professor Richard Hastings Researcher from CEDAR, University of Warwick. He has been a researcher for over 30 years, and works primarily in the field of learning disability and autism. He works with practitioners and other services in many ways. All of Richard's research is very applied and focused on trying to understand the challenged that face children with learning disabilities and their families, but also what they can help to do about that to change and improve people and their families. In this episode, Paddy, Jo and Richard discuss The State of the Nation report from the International Journal of Positive Behaviour Support. They discuss the priority of co-production in the report, differences between the first and second report, and identify some broader themes in the report (for example, identifying who PBS is for, things to respond to based on change occurring in the 10 years since the first report, the drive behind this change, and more). Further, they discuss pushback received and how to combat unsuccessful attempts at implementing PBS. To conclude, Richard tells us about his hopes regarding what happens next and what this paper will do for the community.

This episode links to Episode 10 when Paddy and Jo spoke with Peter Baker about staff wellbeing. Nick discusses an initial pilot research project that trained staff from two community based adult services to provide post incident support. Nick shows that two stages are required, Diffusion and Critical Incident Stress Debrief.