Behavioral Consultation: Goals, Communication, and CBC

Goals of Behavioral Consultation

Palmer and colleagues describe the process of behavioral consultation as a multistage process of problem solving that offers services to clients indirectly. A consultee-consultant relationship facilitates the triadic relationship, with the consultant endeavoring to modify client behavior by instilling skills in the consultee to effectively resolve future problems. Organizational change successfully ensues with the aid of this multistage approach to problem solving.

Assessment, evaluation, and intervention are interlinked and constitute the most effective means of treating the client. The stages of evaluation and assessment typically depend on noticeable, specifiable, and measurable data. The four steps involved in behavioral consultation are: identification of the problem, assessment of the problem, implementation of treatment, and evaluation of treatment. These stages indicate the steps needed for progressing from the point of problem description to resolution, and are procedurally operationalized using the interview method.

Behavioral Assumptions and Learning Principles

None of the existing widely accepted human behavioral or personality theories strongly disagrees with the notion that humanity is, to a considerable degree, a product of its surrounding environment. Behavior therapy, however, states quite precisely how individuals are impacted by the environment with regard to established principles of learning — such as operant and classical conditioning and modeling.

People embarking on therapy usually expect to be asked, or prompted, to think about their experiences in early childhood in painstaking detail. Models such as the psychoanalytic model, which gained widespread popularity in America throughout much of the twentieth century, strongly emphasize the significance of working through or exposing early occurrences believed to be crucial. It is assumed that gaining "insight" into such experiences will help "cure" the client.

Two key questions arise from this supposition. First, how can one be certain that these insights satisfactorily depict actual childhood experiences? As is often revealed, insights put forward before therapists constitute a specific category of verbal conduct, bound by the very learning principles that shape other behaviors. The phenomenon of verbal conditioning — in which an experimenter can, through selective reinforcement, increase particular classes of verbal reaction — has been repeatedly verified at the laboratory level. Given the seemingly higher motivational levels of most clients, such influences may be anticipated to have even greater potency in therapeutic settings. Hence emerges the idea of variation in learning histories and the need to alter other people's behavior.

Communication in Behavioral Consultation

Communication constitutes a central element of the behavioral consultation model. The consultee must acquire information including basic background details, client behavior, behavioral setting characteristics, plans, the nature of observations, and any additional relevant information. Communication helps ensure that correct and valuable consultee information is obtained. Verbal processes employed in this context include specification, assessment, summarization, interpretation, and validation. Emitters and elicitors represent consultant leads. On the whole, these elements facilitate the entire process of behavioral consultation, encompassing the steps of problem identification, assessment, plan implementation, and evaluation.

Conjoint Behavioral Consultation (CBC)

Conjoint Behavioral Consultation (CBC) has been described as an indirect, organized service delivery method in which educators and parents are brought together to collaborate and address the behavioral, educational, and social needs of a person for whom both parties hold some responsibility. Its purpose is to engage educators and parents in joint problem solving with a consultant's assistance. In the CBC approach, home-school connections are regarded as critical. The approach expands on previous consultation models by providing simultaneous services to both educators and parents (Sheridan and Colton, 1994).

Some of CBC's goals are: (a) to share problem-solving responsibility; (b) to improve relations and communication among school faculty, students, and their families; (c) to collect complete and useful information connected with the identified issue; and (d) to develop the skills of all involved parties.

CBC constitutes an indirect service delivery method aimed at improving services to pupils and enhancing the teacher-parent problem-solving relationship. The process has been subjected to empirical appraisal using underachievers and socially withdrawn students. Its efficacy in addressing issues that occur exclusively at home has yet to be fully established (Sheridan and Colton, 1994). Nevertheless, considerable empirical evidence and theoretical support exists to indicate that events at home can influence a student's conduct and performance at school.

Through systematic and meticulous analysis of individual cases, researchers and educational professionals can begin identifying favorable interventions and plans for tackling childhood issues. The available case study evidence suggests that CBC may prove successful in delivering services to address specific domestic child issues. It also supports the development of school-based services that empower educators and parents in problem solving and educational collaboration.

In particular, because continuous evaluation processes — including baseline measurement — were employed, the impact of testing effects and regression to the mean is unlikely. Given the long-standing nature of the issues examined (more than eighteen months) and the significant and immediate treatment impacts, the potential for maturation or historical factors to account for the results is further reduced (Sheridan and Colton, 1994).

References

Cautilli, J., Riley-Tillman, C., Axelrod, S., & Hineline, P. (2005). Current behavioral models of client and consultee resistance: A critical review. International Journal of Behavioral Consultation and Therapy, 1(2).

Palmer, D., Pham, A., & Carlson, J. (n.d.). Behavioral consultation. In SpringerLink Reference.

Sheridan, S., & Colton, D. (1994). Conjoint behavioral consultation: A review and case study. Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation, 5(3).

Sheridan, S., & Elliot, S. (1991). Behavioral consultation as a process for linking the assessment and treatment of social skills. Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation, 2(2), 151–173.