Positive Behaviour Support for Children and Adolescents with Anxiety Disorders

Training Course Introduction

Positive Behaviour Support Strategies for Children and Adolescents with Anxiety is a self-paced online course that will equip you with a toolkit of practical strategies to create environments that reduce anxiety and support children and adolescents to feel safer, calmer, and more confident. This accredited training program provides formal recognition and quality assurance, ensuring you receive a professional and recognized qualification in the field. You can expect a supportive and structured learning experience, with clear guidance on what you will encounter throughout the course. Learners are able to progress through the course in their own time, allowing for maximum flexibility to fit your schedule.

Through this tailored online training, you will be able to help your child achieve better communication, social, emotional, behavioural, and learning outcomes while managing anxiety-driven behaviours. You’ll also learn a range of behaviour support strategies to respond with deeper understanding, reduce distress, and develop a prevention plan by better understanding the triggers, patterns, and functions of anxiety. The course content is developed to the highest quality standards, with professional support available to ensure an excellent learning experience.

You will have 12 months to complete the course from date of purchase. Participants can book their place by filling out an online form and selecting from available dates for live or interactive sessions.

Course Training Objectives

Overall aim

This course helps parents, educators, and therapists move beyond surface behaviours to uncover the real reasons behind anxiety. Using the principles of Functional Behaviour Assessment (FBA) and Positive Behaviour Support (PBS), you’ll learn to identify what drives and maintains anxiety-driven behaviour, apply trauma-informed, person-centred strategies, and build proactive supports that promote safety, predictability, regulation, and lasting positive change across home, school, and community settings. Throughout the course, a dedicated team and tutor support are available to guide and assist you at every step.

Learning Objectives

(By the end you will be able to:)

Knowledge

• Understand the root causes of anxiety by exploring how sensory sensitivities, cognitive overload, trauma history, communication challenges, intolerance of uncertainty, and neurodevelopmental differences contribute to distress.
• Identify antecedents, triggers, and setting events that increase the likelihood of anxiety-driven behaviours, using ABC data and functional hypotheses to understand what the behaviour is communicating.
• Recognise the role of emotional regulation challenges, avoidance patterns, and unmet needs in maintaining anxiety and withdrawal, refusal, shutdown, or escalated fear responses.
• Conduct Functional Behaviour Assessments (FBA) using tools such as ABC charts, behaviour frequency, duration, and intensity graphs to identify patterns, functions, and early warning signs of anxiety.
• Translate assessment findings into measurable goals and Positive Behaviour Support Plans, supporting proactive, data-driven intervention across home, school, and community settings.
• Respond safely and effectively to escalation by recognising early indicators of anxiety, applying staged de-escalation strategies, and using low-arousal, evidence-based techniques that maintain emotional safety and dignity.

Skills

• Apply the Assess–Manage–Prevent cycle to identify the functions of anxiety-driven behaviours and design proactive, neuroaffirming, evidence-based supports.
• Conduct or contribute to a Functional Behaviour Assessment (FBA) to identify triggers, maintaining factors, and underlying skill deficits related to anxiety and avoidance.
• Develop and implement Behaviour Prevention and Management Plans that promote predictability, emotional regulation, flexible thinking, and positive participation across home, school, and community environments.
• Teach and reinforce replacement skills, such as communicating worries, problem-solving, managing uncertainty, using coping strategies, and practising gradual exposure in safe and supported ways.
• Collaborate effectively with caregivers, educators, and allied health professionals to ensure consistency, monitor progress, and celebrate improvements in regulation, participation, and wellbeing.

Course Curriculum

This course is structured into six progressive modules, each designed to deepen your understanding of childhood and adolescent anxiety and guide you step-by-step through the Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) framework.

Across the modules, you’ll progress from understanding what Anxiety is and why it occurs, to learning how to assess, prevent, and respond to anxiety-driven behaviours in ways that promote regulation, connection, predictability, and emotional safety. Practical, evidence-based strategies are woven throughout to help you apply the learning directly within your setting — whether at home, school, or in the community.

By the end of the course, you will have a clear understanding of how to use PBS tools to complete a Functional Behaviour Assessment (FBA), develop a Behaviour Prevention Plan, and design a Behaviour Management/Response Plan. These tools will equip you to support positive, sustainable change in children and adolescents with Anxiety with confidence, competence, and compassion.

WHO IS THIS COURSE FOR:

Parents and carers

Childcare workers

Preschool educators

Primary and secondary teachers

Teachers assistants

Disability support staff

Youth workers

Behaviour Support Practitioner

Allied health professionals

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