In June and July 2025, the Members Representative Body invited members to share their experiences with Positive Behaviour Support (PBS).

There is some easy-read information from the UK society for Behaviour Analysis here.

This was to help members understand what matters most to each other and to learn more about how PBS is working in practice.

Since Learning Disability England started speaking to members about their experiences, we have heard different opinions and learned more about different experiences of PBS. 

We have written a short report about what we heard.

You can read it here

The Big messages are:

1. People shared examples of PBS making a difference and working well for some people. 

2. There were also people who told us PBS does not work or that quality of PBS varies a lot.  

3. Some people said they do not know what PBS or that they think the words get used by people in lots of different ways

The Members Representative Body looked at all the feedback and think there are some areas people practicing, training or commissioning PBS need to work more on: 

1. Defining Quality of Life 

How do commissioners and support providers understand how the use of PBS has really improved someone’s quality of life? 

This includes how quality of life is measured and by whom. 

We think the person (and their family) should decide what matters. 

2. Understanding what PBS is and where it fits in good support 

The feedback shows how PBS is making a difference for some people. 

It also raises concerns about whether it is understood in the same way by everyone and whether the quality of practice is consistently good enough. 

3. Control and consent 

We would like to see people’s voice leading all their support (including PBS) and there are good ways of making decisions with people. 

This is more important if someone does not use words to communicate. 

The member reps agreed that we will:

• Ask to meet with UK-SBA to share this feedback and to understand how the feedback will be used, especially how people themselves can be better heard in relation to the use of PBS. 

• Make sure all members know about this and check if they want to add anything. 

You can add anything here 

• Look for chances to help people’s direct experiences be heard in research. 

• Keep campaigning for all support to be rights based focused on a good life as part of our work as part of Good Lives.

We are sad and sorry that we couldn’t get more self-advocates to speak up, we know we could never really do this by a survey.  

There might be other reasons for this, do people who are being supported in this way know they are?   

Is it more likely to be used with people who do not use words to communicate? Can YOU help? 

Tell us anything else about this here

Read here the updates we shared earlier as members fed back