Question: what are behavioural interventions

Alice Jones Bartoli answered on 14 Jun 2011:

Behavioural interventions, or treatments, are anything that parents, teachers or psychologists can put in place to help a child (or adult) change their behaviour from something that’s not really great to behaviour that’s more appropriate.

The type of behavioural interventions that I run involve working with children to change their behaviour through target-setting and rewards. So, we talk to the child about what behaviour target we should set for them – something like, ‘listening to instructions without arguing’ or ‘putting my hand up when I want something instead of shouting’, then the child knows what they need to be focusing on. If they meet their targets, then they can receive a small token, which counts as a reward – they can use it up on something small (like 5 minutes of play), or they can save it up for something bigger (e.g. a game of football in the afternoon). These rewards help the child to focus on the targets, and help them to see that behaving in a certain way is good – and can benefit them in wider ways.