Ep. 42: Conducting a Collaborative FBA Meeting for Behavior Planning Success - Part 7 of the FBA Mini-Series

🎯 Key Takeaways
✔️ Collaboration is Key: Bringing the family and team together at this stage ensures everyone is on the same page and supports a collaborative approach to behavioral intervention.
✔️ The Importance of the FBA Meeting: The FBA meeting is an essential step to review findings, involve the family, and determine whether a Behavior Intervention Plan (BIP) is needed.
✔️ What We Look For: In this episode, we discuss guiding questions to help decide if a BIP is necessary, such as whether the data accurately reflects the behavior and if more data is needed.
✔️ Clear Communication Matters: The meeting should emphasize clear communication with families, making sure they feel heard and involved without overwhelming them with technical details.
✔️ Setting Short-Term Goals: Even if a BIP is likely, setting immediate, manageable goals keeps progress on track until the formal plan is in place.

For you!
🤔 Do we need a BIP? visual
📄 Free Agenda Template: Download a customizable FBA meeting agenda to help keep your team focused and organized.
📊 FBA Printouts and Data Collection Tips: In the Facebook group, find tips on organizing FBA data for easy team review.

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Transcript

Audra: [00:00:00] It's not just a formality, but it's a critical kind of checkpoint for us to ensure that we're being accurate and having that family involvement as well. 

Intro: Welcome to the Misfit Behaviorist Podcast mini series. This round, join your hosts Audra Jensen and Sami Brown, here to bring you fun and functional advice for creating and implementing behavior plans. Let's get started. 

Audra: Welcome back to the Misfit Behaviorist Podcast, where we are wrapping up today our mini series as far as the FBA process. We're going to continue on and talk about the BIP behavior plan process, but today we just want to talk about kind of the wrap up of the FBA piece, getting together with the family and the team and making a decision about going forward. And so that is our plan today. This is the point where I think we pretty much know if we're moving forward with a behavior plan. I would say at least 75 percent of the time I've been in teams where we pretty much have the behavior [00:01:00] plan written as well, or everybody knows that we're doing that. But it's kind of, you know, a given I say 25 percent of the time we have to have a meeting and either then move on to the BIP portion, or at that point, we say we don't need a BIP, but for the most part, we're going to talk about this meeting as if you haven't completed the BIP yet. But a lot of the times, just because we know the students, we know the situation we've communicated with the parents. We know we're continuing. It also saves the family from having to come in for 2 meetings. But I don't want to skip this step as in sometimes you do need to have a meeting at this point to discuss the findings and then decide what the next steps are. So I just want to put that kind of little caveat in as we start this. 

Sami: And I have done where kind of that functional analysis piece where if you have targeted an intervention that you think is going to potentially help even part of the FBA process, I've just done a phase change line in the data to be able to make a notation of we tried this on this date so that if there is improvement through that process, [00:02:00] then that may help kind of lead into the BIP process of an intervention strategy that you're using. 

Audra: That's perfect. So the why, the when, the how. So why is the meeting essential? We're going to bring everybody together, collaborate, discuss the findings, decide what the next steps are. It's not just a formality, but it's a critical kind of checkpoint for us to ensure that we're being accurate and having that family involvement as well. And then the when to schedule the meeting, it depends on kind of the scope of your data collection, kind of the patterns, the intensity of the behavior, how quickly we need to get that meeting done, or if we need a little time to kind of sit back and let's get make sure everybody's pieces or I mean, it should be together anyway. 

Sami: You know, I was going to add too because you said it, but it's so important that the parents do not feel that the school, the district, the teachers or the team are making any decisions without them. And so the FBA is the meeting itself is a, "Yes, I know that I've been getting the phone calls from administrators. Yes, we know that there's [00:03:00] a problem that's going on, or the teacher's emailed four times this week, or my child's come home and there he's reported, or she's reported this," but, we're bringing everybody together to say, while we've been working behind the scenes, this is the picture and and we're presenting it to everybody at the same time so that they feel included because in order for us to make meaningful change, and we talk a lot about that behavioral contrast that seesaw between what happens at home and how it impacts school and vice versa. The parents need to be on board 100%. So I think that was just an important part that you mentioned about the why, where, and when. 

Audra: I don't like to go to a family with, you know, 20 different options or something. Typically when I made these, I would get some information back from family and they'd be able to say, we can meet Tuesdays and Thursdays afternoon or whatever. Scheduling with a team at school is so hard because of everybody's difficult, concrete schedules that we can't work around. So getting that information first from the family, because we have to make sure the family's there. I would do this a few weeks before, you [00:04:00] know that your FBA stuff is done. So maybe 2 weeks before you feel like your data is done, reach out to the family, say, hey, we're getting close to the end now, what are your availabilities on this week? Or maybe the week after that? Have them send you a few dates and then send those out to your team and schedule one of those within your team, because it's just so hard to get everybody schedules to line up.

The how is once you have that date, that seems like works out to everybody, make sure you know your families well. Do they like to receive their information through email or phone call or text or whatever it is that works for you and your family? Make sure that they have written confirmation about when the meeting is and you hear back from them that yes, I will be there because sometimes they give us dates and then we decide one and we send it out to them. We don't hear back and it turns out that they now have a doctor's appointment or something at that time it doesn't work and then you have to go back and reschedule things. So just make sure you get that confirmation back from your families at that date that you guys chose does work for them still, so I think that's important.

And then the last piece before we actually get into kind of the questions that guide [00:05:00] our decision making and the actual FBA is is having a really clear agenda for the meeting and I just today I whipped together a freebie that I'll put into the group and on the TPT store of a possible agenda that you might use, but you can use it and change it, whatever. But I just think it's really important that we have an agenda because otherwise conversations tend to go out here and there and everybody's talking. Some of the most important parts in that agenda is the very beginning describing who is in the meeting, what their role is, and kind of your agreements of how the meeting is going to run, kind of your expectations. And everybody is in agreement to that. And then you go through the beef of the meeting and then at the very end. Obviously, it's the whole adage, you know, tell them what you're going to tell them, then you tell them, and then you tell them what you told them. So at the very end, kind of wrap up, and then keep track of like who's in charge of what you're doing next, and so it's not just we have this meeting and we walk away, but we actually know we have on paper that the family should have access to of what decisions were made in the meeting as we go forward. 

Sami: I think that one really important [00:06:00] piece is that the FBA, that specific meeting doesn't replace an IEP meeting or have the discussion of change of placement. So if you're looking at it to be a causal, you're having an FBA meeting and you want to move them to a different specialized program or something else, the FBA itself, that's not the meeting. You don't discuss placement changes in an FBA meeting.

Audra: So let me just go through kind of what I put into the agenda. So I put a cute little informational thing to go home, but when the meeting is, I think it's important whether you use this or anything, you make sure you send that reminder to the families that we talked about and they confirm that, and then in the meeting itself, once you have everybody there, I love that you either as a parent, you're going to come in, and you're talking about something that's challenging. Everybody's here to talk about a crappy behavior that your kid is doing. I have to tell you going in as a parent, these are hard meetings to go into because for one thing, you're embarrassed. Honestly, you're embarrassed that your [00:07:00] kid is doing these things that are causing all these people to come together. So I think from the parent perspective, now switching to the school perspective of the team members, make sure you make those families feel welcomed and cared about and that you're here to help . I mean, that was the best thing I ever heard was, I love your kid. He's so cool. You know, those are the things we want to hear. We don't want to go right in and go off this, you know, we really want to make sure that the families feel loved and cared for in these meetings because these are some of the hardest meeting IEP meetings can be hard, yes, but these are some of the hardest meetings we go through.

Some of the first things you're gonna get together, you're gonna do that kind of opening. Who's here, what the purpose is. Describe very briefly kind of what we're doing with the FBA, what the next steps are at the end of this FBA meeting, who's here at the table, have everybody introduced themselves, setting up those ground rules, you know, making sure that everybody is in agreement, we can have disagreements. This is a place for open discussion. This is not set in stone, but we [00:08:00] want to talk about the objective data that we've come through, the hypotheses that we've come up with the, the plans that we, we think going forward would be the best steps, So setting up all of that beforehand, I think is really important, and then just kind of summarize kind of what we did during the process.

We're talking about what kind of data we collected what it looked like, that we had direct observations. We talked to people just so that the family can see that we didn't just write down a bunch of things that we already know, that we really took effort in describing and looking into it and that this is important to us as it is to them to find out what's going on and how can we make it better for the student.

Sami: I was just going to add to that just based on your outline, I personally, as a BCBA wouldn't give the FBA printout to the team until step 4, because most of the time, once people get their hands on a document, they want to start sifting through. I feel like for them to hear what the process was and who everybody at the table is and what our [00:09:00] purpose is and what our ground rules in order to keep everyone's attention and on focus of that agenda, don't hand out anything until you hit that kind of step four, where you're going to start diving into it.

Audra: I love that. Yes. Very good. So then, yeah, the next step would be discussing that, and I don't think just like in an IEP, I don't think we need to or should go through every single line. I can tell you from that parent perspective when you're given a 20 page document or a 5 page document, even to be expected to figure out what's in there and have everybody go through every single line. I really just want a conversation to happen. I want discussion to happen. Tell me the big picture of what's going on rather than this huge document with a bunch of lingo, you know, that I'm not familiar with. All right, so then when you do go through that FBA to describe what an operational definition is, you don't have to use that word to just say, hey, we wanted to take all of this information in the big funnel that we got, and we narrowed it down and we wanted to create one statement that [00:10:00] encompasses what we figured out. And so this was what we call an operational definition, this wrap up summary statement. This is what we're talking about. The operational definition describing the behavior, summary statement kind of being that synopsis of everything so that they understand why we have all of this information, but we really want to bring it down to where everybody can understand it in a simple, simple statement. 

Sami: Yeah, I was just going to add to because you brought up a really good point. I'm just coming from that parent perspective as well. When I go to a team meeting and someone is reading it line by line. I don't feel that they're as prepared or that they really know my child because if they're having to read it to that significant degree and it doesn't feel comfortable, I don't feel like I have the same confidence in their knowledge. So we should know enough about the document that we can say, you're going to see these bullet points. This top section is about, the brief history of the student. And then you're going to give them a synopsis. And you're going to talk very freely [00:11:00] because it gives people the confidence that you know what you're talking about. You didn't just develop this document, whatever the document is, but you can speak to it. 

Audra: I think it's really important that you help the parents understand what function is. I think this is the point to really talk about this, that we're not just targeting a behavior, that the whole point of it is figuring out why that behavior is happening, and that is what the function is, because that's going to change and guide our strategies going forward. Because I don't think a lot of parents understand the importance of knowing what the why of what behaviors are happening, and that's also good for teachers that might be in the meeting who are just learning this as well. That is so important to understand why these behaviors are happening, because that does guide what we're doing next.

Sami: And we joked, because we talked about the functions, you can inadvertently be reinforcing a behavior that you're wanting to extinguish if you don't identify it. 

Audra: Then you talked about that, you talk about, I like to use these discussion questions that I put into this agenda, something like, is everyone confident that the FBA results that we talked about, that they're [00:12:00] reflecting the behavior accurately, does additional training come into play that would help with this, the situation rather than going to, do we need to go into a full BIP, which we will talk about in a minute.

Is the data that we collected, do we need to collect more? Do we have enough here? Is everybody confident? This is the time to discuss this as a team. Is everybody confident that we've captured it? We have enough data. Do we need to do a little bit more? Do any tweaking? Are we like, yeah, we got it this time.

And I think this is a big one, are there any immediate needs, significant needs for safety that we need to watch because I think we're going to jump on safety issues really quickly, more quickly than we would when things that aren't immediate danger safety stuff. 

Sami: I was just going to add an FBA that's written by a BCBA in a school district is going to look different than an FBA that's written by a school psychologist in the district. And so mine typically get uploaded as an attachment as a PDF in the IEP online software, because of the fact that I can't [00:13:00] insert the visual graphs, the visual displays of the data in any other type of form. And typically I'm not just a wordy person in general, but the FBA document is wordy and so it doesn't have the boxes online that allow that to just be kind of inputted. So I just kind of wanted to mention that on the side. 

Audra: I've seen in recent years, more even psychologists versions of the FBAs going through that because they just, they have more information. I think they're getting better about that, using graphs and stuff. Just we're visual people. We like graphs, not just we as BCBAs, but people in general. We like to see things visually rather than just like talk, talk, talk. Most IEP systems that I've seen, you're allowed to just, you know, upload one. I have seen where one psychologist would take my FBA and upload it, but then also take out the pieces from that and then copy paste them into the FBA portion of the IEP, which is important too. So whatever your district chooses to do is great. 

 Now deciding if a BIP [00:14:00] is needed and I'm going to hold off on this because I'm going to pull up another visual in a sec, but that is something that we're talking about next. We're also setting short term goals. You know, what's the next thing we need to do just right now? And then really opening it up for Q& A, parent, team input, making sure that everybody around the table has time to ask questions and give input and everybody's kind of on the same page going forward.

And the rest of this is just kind of wrap up, you know, agreements that we make, assigning responsibilities. I have in this little freebie, there's the notes section, but I also have this. So somebody asisgn, in the very beginning, somebody to take notes. So you don't have to think about it in the moment. And as part of that, as you go through the meeting, whether it's this or an IEP meeting, we always come up with things. Oh, yeah, I should do that. I should either have Somebody assigned to write the stuff down, who's assigned to do something, what they're going to be doing.

And also it's really important to have that when. I did put in here who's in charge of following up with this person. So just the who, what, when of assignments that may have come up during the meeting. So that at the very end, the parent and everybody [00:15:00] else on the team can have this and have that accountability that we've made these decisions. These are the things that we're doing going forward.

This is just a quick little visual, and these are the things that I like to talk about. Either in the FBA or as we've decided to go on to a BIP, I'd say probably 9 or more times out of 10, we already know we're doing a BIP, but there are times where we don't, and these are some of the questions I think is really important that we go through to make sure that we're making that decision as a team, and I've done this either in the meeting, like I said, or everybody already has an agreement of these. So here's the questions I'd like to ask. 

Is the team confident that the FBA accurately reflects the current behavior situation? So, are we in agreement in this team that what we did here accurately reflects everything that we've been seeing, we've been talking about? So another question is asked is can the students behavior be effectively managed with additional staff training or alternate classroom strategies. So this is a case where we may go into a situation and the teacher and maybe a gen ed teacher who's really [00:16:00] overwhelmed with the situation. Maybe we just need to help that teacher understand or additional para support. Additional training and strategies that they could use that a whole behavior intervention plan is not necessary that they just need a little tweaking and maybe just a little tweak and a little training a little BST and they'll be able to go forward with that.

Sami: And a lot of districts do have some professional development TOSAs, so to speak, that can come in and actually help guide that teacher just on basic tier one, tier two interventions that may have originally been missed in the very beginning. And that once those skills are developed for them, it's going to not impact just this one student that we're talking about, but the entire classroom. And so then therefore your question of the BIP, do we need it? 

Audra: And being able to create strategies or teach strategies that help the whole class. I mean, that helps the whole community, so I love that. All right, another question I ask is, should the team wait and gather more data with the current supports before deciding on a full BIP? You know, maybe you just need to give it another [00:17:00] six weeks, and let's come back for a brief meeting in six weeks. Maybe it's something that's transitory.

Sami: The other thing I was just going to add, in high level cases we have actually come to a decision to continue data collection in order to show that the recommended strategies that we think are going to have an impact on the behavior, we're going to put those into play and then try to continue with the data collection. It may come back that yes, those supports will do it, but then we're then coming together as a team to again, have those conversations about setting. And is that the appropriate setting for him to receive their supports. 

Audra: Two more questions I ask are there specific skills or behaviors that the team feels need immediate focus to prevent further escalation? Is there a significant safety concern? And in that case, we're just moving right on to the BIP. We're not going to stand around and wait for more data. If there's safety involved, then we act. Then the last one is have the team members discussed and agreed on potential interventions that could address the behavior. So this is where either in that meeting or [00:18:00] after, before whatever that we're really talking about from the information we got from the FBA. What strategies fit those behaviors? What strategies fit those hypotheses? And are we in agreement that these are either new strategies or something that we feel is going to make meaningful change?

What we don't want is to create an FBA and or a BIP that's just evidence of what we're already doing, because if that was working, then we wouldn't be here. So let's try something else. Let's agree upon something new and let's talk about when we're going to come back together. To see if those things are working and how we're going to do it systematically.

At the very end, we're just like, okay, is everybody in agreement? You know, we're going to go forward with a BIP. We're going to give it a certain amount of time to gather information to create the plan, to continue taking data, to assess how we're going, and then get that on. I don't think it takes long from the point that you have all this information to just putting it on paper and assigning people what they're doing in regards to the BIP. 

Sami: I don't think I've ever done just an FBA [00:19:00] meeting by itself. It's been an FBA BIP meeting. Can't recall of a case that I have where then I've then scheduled this another meeting to go over the BIP. 

Audra: I would say the majority of the time you are going to be doing them both, but I don't ever want a family to feel like we've gone in there just like with an IEP, that we've gone in there with preconceived set decisions made.

That we even if we have decided on a BIP or we pretty much have it written, I want to go into this meeting with them feeling like they have input into it, and say we're sitting in this meeting, we're discussing all this, we're talking about Just the FBA, right? And the family's like, yeah, this really sounds right. You say, let's go forward with a BIP. I have something planned out. I have some good thoughts. Let us finish it up and then we will send it out to you. I think that's a good way to do it. I never want a family to feel like they're not part of those decisions that are being made. And because you can have a FBA without the BIP, I just don't want to skip over that.

But I think you're right. Most of the time you will have that [00:20:00] meeting having already created the BIP, and that's what we're going to start talking about now is kind of those strategies, how to write up that behavior plan and kind of what strategies to pick and how to monitor if it's working or not. And so we'll start talking about that in some upcoming episodes. 

Sami: And you had mentioned that with the FBA, there could have been in this open discussion now with the whole team together, some change that has occurred. That's making an impact on the behavior, whether it's the parents implementing a stricter bedtime routine, that's helping with them getting settled into sleep or dad's house, you know, parents are split and maybe dad's house wasn't the most appropriate place for them to be going to school in the mornings.

And so they've made some sort of change that suddenly is going to have a significant impact on the behavior. That doesn't warrant us writing it into a behavior plan. That's like a family plan.

Audra: Well, the other thing you might have had during the FBA is get some information from the parents of strategies that might work that you have thought about.

So you may have created all this beautiful BIP already handoff and they're like, Oh, we do this thing at home and he really responds to it. Well, you want to incorporate [00:21:00] that into the BIP. So again, I wouldn't go into an FBA meeting with a completed BIP, but you're going to know in that meeting, how far you're going to take it from there.

We will come back in the next few episodes and start talking about those behavior plan strategies and probably just take a few episodes to go through those. But I think those are really important that we're systematic about choosing those and we're not just kind of picking them out of a hat.

And then we will go on to discuss lots of other good things. So remember to subscribe, go to the Facebook group. Again, like on Wednesdays, we're trying to answer questions that you put into the group. So stick them in there because we want everybody to be happy and collaborative and have a great year.

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