As a member of the British Institute of Learning Disabilities (BILD), Aspens believes that to improve the quality of life, independence and autonomy of the people we support, Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) must be a cornerstone of our ethos and values.

Positive Behaviour Support is a multi-component framework for understanding and supporting people who display behaviours of concern.  By understanding the context in which these behaviours occur we can implement proactive, evidence-based strategies to enhance all areas of an individual’s life.

PBS training for our staff 

All Aspens staff complete a full day introduction to Positive Behaviour Support so that they understand the framework that they are expected to work within. This introduction to PBS provides a basic understanding of the 10 core components and principles of the PBS Framework, how to build a PBS support plan using evidence-based strategies and data collection, and how to implement total communication strategies. 

Course outline:

• The core components of the PBS Framework
• Quality of Life measures
• Building a PBS plan using data collection
• Understanding the functions of behaviour
• Proactive and reactive strategies
• Implementing total communication strategies

Our PBS team 

Meraud Davis, Ollie Payne and Yanina Dickinson are our team of Positive Behaviour Support Specialists. 

Meraud Davis, Positive Behaviour Support Specialist

Meraud has worked for Aspens for five years, originally as a Behaviour Specialist working with children and young people and now in our adult residential, supported housing, day services and outreach provisions.

She supports staff teams to embed PBS, provides training and completes functional assessments to support behaviour support plans. 

Meraud has a Masters in Applied Behavioural Analysis and is working towards Board Certification. She has a degree in Psychology from Sussex University and a PGCE in Further Education.

Ollie Payne, Positive Behaviour Support Specialist

Ollie has a background in Neuroscience, supporting people 1-1 with brain injury on their rehabilitation journey and has completed a Psychology Bachelors degree and a Cognitive Neuroscience Masters. He will be starting the MSc in ABA at the Tizard Centre shortly, which he says "is going to be an amazing opportunity to develop the skills that I am already learning through my work".  Ollie is very keen on fitness and keeping a healthy mindset in daily life. He is passionate about boxing and mixed martial arts and when not working out you can find him sitting in the garden reading a book.

Ollie says, "As a PBS Specialist, I maintain regular contact with services mainly across Sussex and help them understand behaviour of concern, build knowledge about autism and PBS and implement strategies across the service to give the people we support the best quality of life. I love PBS as I like the functional side of the assessments and talking with the people we support and the staff team. I enjoy working together with the people at Aspens and those who use our services. I find the best part of the job is being in services and building and maintaining rapport with the people we support and the teams." 

Yanina Dickinson

Yanina's background is in Clinical Psychology, DBT, Emotional regulation and Trauma.  She is currently studying a Masters in Applied Behaviour Analysis at the Tizard Centre and where she says she is loving learning new skills that she can use in her day-to-day work.

Yanina has a lot of interests which all seem to encompass nature (this includes all animals, apart from flies and mosquitoes) and science.  She loves exploring new places and enjoys anything from fossil hunting to climbing trees. 

She is also fascinated with neuroscience and keeps up to date with new research and articles which she uses in the understanding of concepts of trauma responses, anxiety disorders, neurodevelopmental conditions, mental health conditions and so on.  Yanina says, "I am creative, whether it’s in arts and crafts or cooking – although sometimes it looks better in my head!! I also like singing and dancing and no, I’m not brilliant at this!"

Our Positive Behaviour Lead Support Workers are Scott Sutton, Jacob Boast, Megan Bruce, Tsi Angwafo, Kay Hazeldene and Abu Sholagberu.  

Scott Sutton, Positive Behaviour Support Lead, says: "We put strategies in place that improve the lives of the people we support. Definitely the most rewarding part of the work is helping people be as independent as they can be. One of the ladies I work with exhibited a lot of behaviours of concern in the past. Just by working out how she wanted to do things, her behaviour has transformed and she now loves going out on regular trips to the shops and the beach."