005 Bridging Positive Behaviour Support and Functional Communication (Kristin Bayley)

Max MacKenzie, founder of Resilience Enterprises, discusses the unwritten rules, conflicts, survival strategies, and personal growth necessary to build resilience and help shape a long career in behaviour support.

Zac Demopoulos, a specialist behaviour support practitioner and Chief Operating Officer at Step 2 Allied Health, joins the podcast to discuss what new positive behaviour support practitioners need to know when starting out in the NDIS.

Clinical psychologist and specialist behaviour support practitioner Dr Zoe Perry unpacks the often murky distinction between psychology and positive behaviour support, and what genuine interdisciplinary collaboration looks like in practice. The conversation covers the concept of “the missing middle”- people who are too complex for mainstream services, yet not eligible for public mental health or disability supports, and how this gap influences and shapes service delivery. The discussion moves into practical territory, examining where scope of practice and scope of role diverge, whether positive behaviour support should be considered therapy, and how formulation skills can sharpen rather than blur professional boundaries. Real world examples illustrate how psychologists and behaviour support practitioners can work in a genuinely interdisciplinary way, including practical tools like shared formulation and simple memoranda of understanding, and strategies for advocating to the NDIS when clients need both disciplines working together rather than one substituting for the other. Anyone working alongside psychologists and behaviour support practitioners in disability and mental health settings will recognise the tension between staying within scope and responding to genuine unmet need. This conversation offers concrete language and tools for navigating that tension while keeping the person at the centre of a coordinated, evidence-informed interdisciplinary support team.

This episode explores positive behaviour support (PBS) principles in dementia contexts with Dr Alinka Fisher, Senior Lecturer in Disability and Community Inclusion at Flinders University. Drawing on her research across disability, acquired brain injury and dementia, Alinka discusses why behaviour should be understood as communication rather than a symptom of diagnosis, and how PBS frameworks apply flexibly to support people living with dementia and their families. The conversation unpacks the critical distinction between managing behaviours and understanding the complex interactions, neurological changes, personal history and environmental factors that influence how people communicate their needs. Alinka shares insights from education programmes delivered to families and residential aged care staff, highlighting what foundations of good support actually look like in practice.

This episode explores cultural reflexivity in behaviour support practice with Anika Tabassum, a specialist behaviour support practitioner with over a decade of experience supporting culturally and linguistically diverse children and families. Anika examines what cultural reflexivity is- including the critical distinction between cultural awareness and cultural reflexivity, and explains why many well-intentioned practitioners and teams recognise culture as an important factor in behaviour support, but may find challenges in integrating true culturally reflexive practice.