What’s it like to be a Behaviour Support Practitioner?
Rebecca Kim
I imagine since you’ve found yourself on this page, you must have a curiosity around becoming a Behaviour Support Practitioner (BSP). From the outside, the role looks pretty straightforward, however almost every BSP I’ve trained has felt as if they were out of their depth for at least the first 6-12 months. This even goes for BSPs who who receive a great deal of support through working as an employee with an in-house Supervisor and a plethora of resources and support.
Overall, I think this might be because the depth and spread of the role comes as a surprise to most people once they start. At the beginning, being a BSP is just having appointments with a participant experiencing emotional dysregulation and engaging in risks, and then eventually writing a report about it which everyone has to follow. However, in reality, the BSP is so much more. Of course you have to do the appointments and the big report (a Positive Behaviour Support Plan or PBSP), but you also have to do a lot of other stuff.
A bit of an overview of the general tasks of a BSP, not absolute or exhaustive:
Initial onboarding and reaching out to the participant, their families/guardian, and all their service providers
Gathering information from each of the above which can feel like an interrogation if you’re not careful
Setting up Behaviour Recording and collecting all the documentation/data you can get your hands on
Doing risk assessments and checking for restrictive practices
Writing the first big report called an Interim PBSP
Training out your PBSP and its strategies to all the people who are going to be using them
Monitoring the data and checking in to see how your strategies are working (or not working)
Attending team meetings and stakeholder meetings to discuss concerns and progress
Administering functional behaviour and other assessments, and analysing your data
Completion of your Functional Behaviour Asessment to inform your next, even bigger, report
Writing said report, this time called the Comprehensive PBSP
Doing all the training and monitoring all over again
Rinse and repeat every 12 months, or sooner if things change for your participant
Looking at it like this, it seems there’s actually quite a bit to this job! Each step might also take longer, or be more complex, than you expect. You might run into a team who’re quite stuck in their ways, navigate a limited amount of funding for a complex participant, or support a parent who’s going through so much carer burnout that they simply can’t fathom trying anything new. In these times, you’ll need to find ways to professionally pivot and try a different approach as one size never fits all in our space.
And don’t forget, throughout your time as a BSP, you must also be receiving regular Supervision, achieving any KPIs, and working on your learning goals and professional development plan. Not making time to do this means you never prepare your evidence portfolio to reach the next level on the PBS Capability Framework.
Despite all these pressures, working as a BSP is incredibly rewarding, otherwise I for one wouldn’t still be here! Being able to be part of a positive change for someone, seeing their lives and skills improve before your eyes, empowering others to take initiative and make their own strategies for change - each of these experiences must be held onto tightly. This is partly as the positives can be less than in other fields, purely because of the nature of our work. People tend to reach out to us when things are going wrong, so you must make a conscious effort to acknowledge and champion the good things, of which there are many - but only if you’re looking for them.
I’m not trying to scare you off becoming a BSP, as I dearly do love this role and training others to do it, I’m just trying to make sure you have a clear idea of the role so you can be prepared for this before you make the decision to start. Expect to feel like you’re drowning once you wade in and find it’s much deeper than it looks, and if you can, embrace that time and the steep learning curve and reject that it’s a sign you can’t do this. Know that you’re becoming a better practitioner with each new report done, feedback digested, and challenge met.
In a year’s time, you’ll be laughing at yourself remembering you thought you wouldn’t make it. I’ve seen this moment happen for almost every practitioner I’ve trained.
In the end, we need great BSPs in this field. I think being prepared for the ups and downs that aren’t obvious from the outside will make it maybe not easier, but tolerable, so I hope the time you spent to read this and consider what life will look like as a BSP has helped you feel more prepared. And, of course to make a shameless plug, we’d be honoured if you chose us to work with you as your start your new career. And if not, we’re all in this together so we wish you the best of luck - come back any time for our free resources!
