It has been a profound privilege to work alongside such a talented, committed, and deeply compassionate group of people throughout my career. I remain completely in love with the values that underpin Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) and endlessly fascinated by the science that informs it. My commitment to lifelong learning in this area has been shaped as much by the people I have supported as by any formal training. It has been a great honour to get to know and provide support to many people with learning disabilities, some of whom are autistic; they have helped me grow just as much as I hope I have helped them.

I began my career as a support worker in a single-occupancy service, supporting a gentleman with learning disabilities and autism whose behaviour was described as challenging. During this time, I also worked with adults reintegrating into the community following long stays in mental health hospitals. I later joined a small, family-run organisation supporting people whose behaviour was described as challenging, where I trained as a PBS practitioner. Over time, I progressed to managing the team and then took on a role within the Senior Management Team.

Prior to co-founding PBS UK with Tia, I established and managed a national PBS team of consultants and practitioners for a large health and social care provider, delivering support across the UK.

Along the way, I have been fortunate to complete a BSc in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (at the Tizard Centre University of Kent) and an MSc in Applied Behaviour Analysis (at Bangor University). I have worked as a consultant for BILD’s Centre for the Advancement of PBS, am an active member of the Newman Trust charity and the UK Society for Behaviour Analysis’ Positive Behaviour Support Special Interest Group, and have served for several years as a Principal Instructor for PROACT SCIPr-UK®. I also hold a PRINCE2 project management qualification.

We established PBS UK in the summer of 2016, and we haven’t looked back. Since then, we have had the privilege of working with an incredibly diverse group of people – children and adults – across a wide range of settings. The journey hasn’t always been easy (far from it at times), but that was always the point. PBS UK was founded to support people to flourish, and that purpose continues to guide everything we do.

Paddy Behan

Co-Founder & Director, PBS UK