Challenging Behaviour: A Unified Approach

This report is the result of a joint working group of the learning disability faculties of the British Psychological Society and the Royal College of Psychiatrists, in consultation with the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists. The main focus is on adults who are vulnerable to restrictive interventions and abuse as a consequence of their limited capacity to make choices for themselves about where they live or work, and how they are supported. Although it focuses primarily on adults with moderate to severe learning disabilities, the broad principles outlined are applicable to children and adults of all degrees of intellectual disability.

The report aims to:

1. • revise and develop the interpretation of the term ‘challenging behaviour’

2. • bring together relevant evidence-based practice with a consensus of clinical opinion and experience

3. • provide a unified framework for good practice in multidisciplinary clinical and social interventions

4. • encourage the development of creative, flexible and effective responses to individuals who present behavioural challenges

5. • provide guidance for service developers and commissioners to inform and empower service users and their carers

6. • provide a set of standards of good practice against which service provision can be benchmarked and audited

7. • promote the development of comprehensive and effective local services and reduce the number of individuals who are failed by the current service provision

8. • provide a framework for training of health and social care professionals and paid support staff and carers

9. • guide future research and development.

Challenging behaviour requires a multidisciplinary and multi-agency approach, and therefore the report has been produced with the intention that it will be relevant and useful to a wide range of health and social care professionals, family and paid carers, service providers and commissioners.

It is intended to provoke action as much as to inform, and to encourage local and national debate, analysis, review and response.