Regionally Based Teams for the Treatment of Challenging Behaviour: A Three-year Outcome Study

Abstract

In 1990, 13 regionally based Behaviour Intervention Support Teams (BISTs) were established in Victoria to assist agencies providing support to persons with an intellectual disability who exhibited challenging behaviour. A primary function of the BISTs was to conduct intensive interventions for clients with severe challenging behaviours. The outcomes of the interventions conducted by eight of these teams were monitored over the period from 1991 to 1993. During this time, a total of 134 such interventions were completed by the teams. Many outcome measures were used for each intervention. These included direct observational measures of the challenging behaviours, measures of skill acquisition by the clients, and satisfaction with the results by caregivers. It was concluded that the interventions resulted in a high rate of success (approximately 75%). Additionally, it was concluded that the use of regionally based specialist teams was an effective way of treating severe challenging behaviours that had previously proven difficult to manage.

Help When It’s Needed First: A Controlled Evaluation of Brief, Preventive Behavioral Family Intervention in a Primary Care Setting

“…Goal Achievement Scales (GAS; Hudson, Wilken, Jauernig, & Radler, 1995). GAS were developed to evaluate the comparative impact of interventions for reducing problem behavior or increasing prosocial behavior for individual clients with unique behavioral goals.…”

The behavioural treatment of sleep difficulties in children with an intellectual disability

“…A Goal Achievement Scale (GAS) was developed based on the procedures of Hudson, Wilken, Jauernig, and Radler (1995). This contained scales with indicators of 0 and 100% success for each of seven possible sleep behaviours which were set by the parents during the first intervention session.…”

Guidelines for Evaluating Parent Training Programs

“…A method of evaluating child outcomes in the generalization settings is goal achievement scaling (Hudson, Jauernig, Wilken, & Radler, 1995). This combines the direct measurement of child behavior change with the concepts of social validity espoused by Kazdin (1977) and Wolf (1978).…”

“…Goal achievement scales were first developed by Hudson et al (1995) to evaluate a government service consisting of regionally based teams to treat the challenging behaviors of people with intellectual disabilities. There was a need to have a scale that could be used to evaluate individual interventions and that could provide collective information about the overall performance of the teams who were treating a wide range of presenting challenging behaviors.…”