Overview

Strategies and opportunities to address the diverse needs of young children have increased rapidly within recent years. Despite improved knowledge of effective strategies, addressing challenging behavior continues to be one of the greatest stumbling blocks in providing inclusive educational services. The consultation model that is traditionally utilized to address the needs of individual children fails to provide ongoing feedback, troubleshooting, and evaluation of the implementation of interventions. Additionally, individuals that are responsible for implementing the interventions often do not have the knowledge or support to effectively teach positive replacement behaviors, arrange the environment to support appropriate behavior while preventing challenging behavior, and monitor performance such that systematic decisions may be made for future programming. The technical assistance training model extends the consultation model by developing a team of individuals within an education agency that is able to provide onsite, longitudinal support in gathering assessment data, planning intervention, supporting implementation of interventions, monitoring progress, troubleshooting interventions as needed, and improving universal applications of positive behavior support strategies. Building this capacity at a local level is the focus of this sustained training effort such that individuals from multiple areas of expertise and professional disciplines may be brought together to form a technical assistance team.