Developing behavioural services to meet defined standards within a national system of specialist education services

Abstract

In response to increasing demand for more accountability and improved outcomes in the provision of behavioural services, Specialist Education Services (SES) in New Zealand employed the trainer of trainers programme developed by the Institute for Applied Behaviour Analysis (IABA). The goal was to develop a national training team capable of training SES staff to carry out assessments and develop support plans that could meet defined standards. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the outcomes of this trainer of trainers project. The primary methods of evaluation included the pre-post training comparisons of trainees' functional assessments and positive behaviour support plans, against 140 defined criteria. The results of this project indicated that the SES national training team was able to train SES staff to meet the same standards of service delivery as the external IABA trainers. Further, a Periodic Service Review (PSR) system was implemented to insure that service standards could be maintained at a high level. A major conclusion reached in this study was that a trainer of trainer approach appears to be effective in preparing large numbers of educational personnel to meet the increasing demands by schools for professionals to meet a high standard of service delivery.