Behavior Support Plans (BSPs)

A BSP essentially takes the behavior-related accommodations and modifications and moves them into their own dedicated plan. 

This makes it easier to get all of the school staff who work with a student on the same page regarding the student's behavior programming. In a BSP, the accommodations are also organized into helpful categories — prevention, reinforcement, and response.

BSPs also include a few other helpful pieces of information, including:

• Descriptions of the target undesired behaviors that are most problematic for the student,

• Warning signs that teachers and other staff can watch out for,

• The functions of the undesired behaviors (i.e., why they occur)

Having a BSP is recommended for any students with behavior needs. BSPs live in SpEd Forms and work just like the accommodations page of the IEP — BSPs are even included on SpEd Forms' "IEP Snapshot" document. It's convenient and time-saving to just have a BSP and keep it rolling.

Ultimately, a student needs a BSP when the IEP team determines that a BSP is needed in order to provide the student with FAPE. Some degree of interpretation will always be involved in that determination. It is far better to proactively develop a BSP than to be in the position of needing to reactively write and implement a BSP in response to urgent student needs. 

There are certain circumstances that clearly indicate the need to develop a BSP:

• If the IEP team considers it a possibility, however remote, that at a some point a student's placement may need to change to a self-contained Setting III or a Setting IV program. Among other things, having a BSP in place prepares the IEP team to follow the steps of the placement guideline. 

• If a student is consistently earning discipline referrals and/or has earned multiple suspensions, either from the classroom or from transportation. If a manifestation determination occurs and a BSP is not already in place, one must be developed. It is better to be proactive.

• If a restrictive procedure is likely to be needed at some point. If a restrictive procedure has already taken place and a BSP was not already in place, one should be developed immediately. Again, it is better to be proactive.

If the change to the BSP is significant, yes. Because the BSP is considered an extension of the IEP, significant changes must follow due process requirements for prior written notice and the case manager should operate using the same procedure that is used when amendments are proposed for the IEP in SpEd Forms. This requirement was clarified by MDE during record review training.

Significant changes (amendment needed) include: 

• Changing the listed replacement behaviors

• Changes to response strategies that will substantially impact the restrictiveness of the student's environment. Examples:

  • The IEP team wants to make a change where, at the first sign of agitation, staff direct the student to leave the GenEd classroom and spend the rest of the class period working in a SpEd resource room.

  • Behavior processing with the student was happening in a GenEd location and the IEP team wants to change this to a SpEd location.

• Changing the safety plan and/or the use of restrictive procedures

In addition, if the target behavior(s) is different from what is identified in the most recent FBA, a new FBA must be completed (e.g., verbal aggression has escalated to physical aggression).

Minor changes (no amendment needed)** include:

• The response strategies are adjusted, but the location stays the same (e.g., we are changing the format of corrective prompting or behavior processing)

• Reinforcement strategies (e.g., types of incentives being offered, how many points/tokens they cost)

• A change in prevention strategies that will not substantially impact the restrictiveness of the student's environment (e.g., the student can request one break per day and the IEP team wants to increase this to two breaks).

**Although written notice is not required in these cases, communication with parent(s) is encouraged.

If one or more sources of data indicate that a student isn't making sufficient progress with the program currently in place (e.g., progress on behavior IEP goals is insufficient, student has been repeatedly suspended, etc.), we encourage you to reach out to your School Psychologist and/or Behavior Services Coordinator for consultation and support.

During consultation, one resource that we sometimes use is the BSP Reflection Form. This is meant to be a brief, informal reflection activity that helps to pinpoint which areas we need to adjust because the current BSP isn't working well enough. It's worth noting that — in order to say that the current BSP isn't working well enough — we need to know whether or not we've actually been implementing the plan with integrity. This is where integrity checks come in.

A Safety Plan template is accessible from our Suicide/Self-Injury and Threat Assessment pages on the Life Skills website. It is designed for short-term use immediately following a safety event. 

For example: Paul (student) is sent to the hospital after a suicide risk assessment at school. When Paul returns to school, the family and school team meet before school to quickly put together a handwritten Safety Plan. The handwritten Safety Plan is photocopied and shared with Paul's teachers. The objective is to rapidly put safeguards in place to protect Paul at school without delaying his return to school.

Within a reasonable amount of time (i.e., 2 weeks or less), one of two things should happen — either:

1. The Safety Plan is ended because the need is no longer there (e.g., an acute mental health crisis where the family/medical providers agree that the safety concerns were temporary).

2. Steps are being taken to incorporate the safety plan into a legal document for the student (i.e., a Section 504 plan or an IEP/BSP). 

   • The short-term Safety Plan is created under the umbrella of the school's duty to protect student safety in the immediate aftermath of a safety event. Long-term, if the student has needs in this area, those needs must be addressed in a document where there are legal provisions around parent input and distribution of the document to school staff (i.e., a Section 504 plan or IEP/BSP).

   • In a BSP, the "Proactive Interventions" in the safety plan template should transfer into the "Prevention Strategies" section of the BSP, and the "Crisis Response Plan" should transfer into the "Response Strategies" section of the BSP.