Behavioural Safety

Many people know that Positive Behaviour Support is not just about problem behaviour – so much of what we do is skills building. One of our favourite areas for skills building is around safety.

Behaviour analysis has been successfully used to teach all kinds of safety behaviours including:

• Road safety
• Kitchen safety
• Stranger awareness
• Preventing absconding/elopement
• What to do in a fire,
• Responding to abuse, and
• Calling emergency services.

People will autism and with learning disabilities are significantly more at risk of mortality from preventable causes including accidents. Some of the statistics are scary, including that people with autism can be up to more than 90x more likely to die from drowning than a member of the typical population. This is NOT okay – especially as we really can do something about it.

Our own Tia’s PhD created a water safety curriculum designed to combat the risk of drowning! The SWAM programme (Swimming and Water-Safety for Autism Manual) was designed in collaboration with a fantastic Scottish swim school and is designed to do everything we can to prevent avoidable deaths from drowning.

PBS UK can work with you to identify areas of risk for your family or supported individuals and design bespoke programmes to ensure they stay safe.