One of the things people don’t always realise about behaviour support is that writing the strategies isn’t actually the hard part. It probably sounds strange to say that, especially when you’re looking at a detailed plan that’s clearly taken time and effort. But in practice, coming up with strategies is not where most of the work sits. It’s everything around it.
When you look at a strategy on paper, it usually sounds fairly straightforward. Things like giving a warning before a transition, adjusting how a request is made, or supporting someone to communicate what they need more effectively. None of that is particularly difficult to write down. What’s harder is knowing whether that strategy is actually going to work for that person, in that environment, with the people who are there day to day. That’s the part that takes time.
You can’t really shortcut that process. Before you get anywhere near writing strategies, you need to understand what’s going on. Not just what the behaviour looks like, but when it’s happening, what’s happening around it, what the person is responding to, and what’s already helping. That usually comes from spending time with the person and seeing how things play out in real situations, not just relying on what’s written in a report or passed on in a handover. Without that, you’re often guessing, even if the strategy sounds right.
This is also where things tend to drift a bit in reality. It’s quite easy for something to look good on paper but not quite land when it’s actually used. You might read a strategy and think it makes perfect sense, but in the moment, when things are busy or escalating or a new staff member is on shift, it doesn’t quite work the way it was expected to. That gap between something sounding right and something actually working is where a lot of behaviour support either succeeds or falls apart.
Practitioners who do this well tend to approach it differently. They don’t just decide on strategies and write them up. They use the time they have with the person to try things out, even in small ways. That might mean tweaking how a transition is supported, or slightly changing how someone responds when early signs of escalation are there, or even just adjusting timing or language. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but either way it gives you something real to work from. By the time a strategy makes it into a plan, it should already have some grounding in what’s actually been seen and tested.
Even when you land on the right strategies, that’s only part of it. The next challenge is whether the people supporting the person can actually use them. Behaviour support isn’t implemented by the practitioner day to day. It’s implemented by families, support workers and providers. If those strategies aren’t clear, or don’t fit into what real shifts look like, or people don’t feel confident using them, they won’t be applied consistently. And without consistency, even the best strategy won’t have much impact.
This is where it becomes very easy to overcomplicate things. Adding more strategies, more detail, more explanation often feels like strengthening the plan, but in reality it can have the opposite effect. A smaller number of clear, practical strategies that people can actually follow will usually lead to better outcomes than a long list that no one consistently sticks to. Part of the role is being able to step back and decide what really needs to be in place, not just what could be included.
Behaviour support also doesn’t stay static. Things change over time, and what works in one stage may not work in another. That’s why it needs to be reviewed and adjusted. Are the strategies being used? Are they helping? What needs to change? That ongoing process is where real progress tends to happen.
This work isn’t always neat or straightforward. Many of the people being supported have complex needs, and there are usually multiple factors influencing behaviour. But even with that complexity, the same foundations keep coming up. You need to understand the person, see what’s actually happening, try things out, keep it practical, and support the people around them to use it consistently.
At the end of the day, writing behaviour support strategies is one part of the job. It matters, but it’s not the part that usually determines whether things improve. That tends to come down to everything that happens before and after the plan is written.
If you ever want to talk through whether strategies are likely to work in practice, or sense-check what’s currently in place, I’m always happy to have a conversation.
