Language for Behaviour & Emotions – Start Up Guide

You will need the Language for Behaviour and Emotions Book (LFBE).

Head to page 48 to look at the assessment administration guidelines first before you try it with the young person.

The Starter Assessment is required for all young people you feel may benefit from this program, before they start the intervention via the toolkit. This assessment provides a basic overview of the child’s profile in the areas that LFBE explores.

The Starter Assessment comprises of 4 essential parts:

• You should begin with Page 54 ‘Assessment Scenario 1’. NB: YOU ONLY NEED TO COMPLETE PAGE 54, ASSESSMENT SCENARIO 1. THE OTHER 3 SCENARIOS ON THE SUBSEQUENT PAGES ARE TO ALLOW MONITORING AND FURTHER TAILORING THE INTERVENTION AFTER YOU HAVE COMPLETED 20 SCENARIOS FROM THE TOOLKIT.

 

• If you are working with older young people, it may be appropriate to use ‘Assessment Scenario 2’ (page 59) as a baseline instead, as Scenario 1 may be too simple.

 

• Once completed, finish the Starter Assessment by carrying out the below:

 

• Page 74 – Young person’s view of their own communication
• Page 77 – How well does the adult help me? (child’s voice)
• Page 79 – The adult’s view of the young person’s communication skills checklist

 

You will need a quiet room for you to work 1-1 with the young person and it should only be done when they are regulated and able to engage. Ideally, they will know and feel comfortable talking with the adult, and the adult doing the assessment should know the young person and their strengths and needs well.

 

The Starter Assessment may identify some areas that require further investigation – (e.g.: low score on Emotion Vocabulary). The LFBE provides further ‘Assessment Tools’ for a deeper dive into the following 7 individual areas:

• Page 83 – Comprehension Monitoring (i.e.: the young person saying when they don’t understand/asking for help)
• Page 91 – Behaviour Vocabulary (i.e.: Learning the words we use to discuss behaviour and developing ability to define words)
• Page 95 – Crazy Phrases (i.e.: Figurative language – idioms/figures of speech – ‘when people don’t say what they mean’).
• Page 100 – Sarcasm and implied meaning
• Page 106 – Emotion words (i.e.: Naming specific emotions/vocabulary around emotions)
• Page 110 – Narrative (i.e.: Storytelling)
• Page 117 – Solving people problems (i.e.: Bringing all of the above together to verbally problem-solve real-life interpersonal situations)

Although the authors recommend that you complete all of these further assessments for ‘gold standard’, please consider how much information you realistically require to gain a functional understanding of their needs. If you have worked through the Starter Assessment and identified a clear need, consider prioritising this area initially, alongside the other information from the young person’s voice and the adult’s view of their communication.

If you wish to use a group scenario for the intervention using the toolkit, consider creating groups around targeting shared need.

You should look at page 70 for scoring guidelines to enable you to work out the child’s ‘Language Level.’

 

The Starter Assessment will allow you to build the child’s personalised profile (page 126-127). It is okay to have a partially completed profile if you have identified the child’s primary needs without the further ‘Assessment Tools.’

The assessment will also give you a score which corresponds to a ‘Language Level’; A – D.

Language Level A is the lowest level and indicates that LFBE is not suitable for this child just yet.

You should instead consider the ‘Language for Thinking’ program, written by some of the same authors, which targets Blank’s Levels 2-4 in more straight-forward scenarios.

Once the child has acquired consistent understanding at Blank Levels 3-4, you could consider LFBE again by repeating the above Starter Assessment process from scratch.

You may wish to consider ‘Language for Thinking’ initially for young people at Language Level B too.

You may find it helpful to translate the information you have gathered on to the ‘Action Plan’ (page 131). You may wish to complete this with your Link Therapist to allow them to support you in implementing the strategies with the child.

Your next steps are to decide if you are going to use a group approach or a 1-1 intervention for this program. The book provides more detail on how to use a group on pages 40-41.

Complete 20 scenarios using the Toolkit with the child/children.

After 20 scenarios working on your key skill, you should return to the next assessment scenario. You can read more about this on page 45.

You should look at page 45 and talk to your Link Therapist at your next meeting for more guidance.