Gill Crawford Behaviour Consultancy

Providing training, assessment, advice and support
for responding to challenging behaviour


What is Gill Crawford Behaviour Consultancy? Training and support for staff working in schools Training and support for staff working in care settings
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Behaviour Consultancy




More Information About Gill Crawford

My name is Gill Crawford and I am an independent behaviour consultant based in Cheshire. My background is in education, and after completing a specialist B.Ed degree in 1985, I taught children with severe learning disabilities for 17 years. During my time as a teacher, I taught pupils of all ages (from 2-19) and all abilities and disabilities within the SLD sector. This included teaching pupils with developmental disabilities (eg Downs syndrome, Williams syndrome), sensory disabilities (hearing and vision loss), cerebral palsy, ASD (Autistic Spectrum Disorder), ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), PMLD (Profound and Mulitple Learning Disabilities) and pupils who exhibited severe and challenging behaviour. In 1997, I became head of the primary department in the school in which I was working. In addition to being a full-time class teacher for ten Year 6, 7 and 8 pupils, I was responsible across the school for behaviour management, first aid, health and safety, integration, co-ordinating the ICT curriculum, carrying out the end of key stage 2 assessments, and producing records of achievement for pupils transitioning to the upper school.

My interest in the field of challenging behaviour began in 1988 and has continued to grow since then. In 1998 I trained with the Loddon School in Basingstoke as a SCIP Instructor (Strategies for Crisis Intervention and Prevention) and held this qualification for 5 years. As a SCIP (now renamed as PROACT-SCIPr UK) Instructor, I was responsible for training all the staff in the Cheshire SLD schools in behaviour management strategies, from 1998-2002. The SCIP courses consisted of a mixture of theory and practice, and involved the teaching of physical intervention strategies to interrupt escalating behaviour and keep people safe in crisis situations.

In 2000, I attended a four day seminar being given by Drs Gary LaVigna and Tom Willis (co-directors of the Institute for Applied Behavior Analysis, Los Angeles) in which they outlined their multi-element approach to managing challenging behaviour within a purely non-aversive framework, and without relying on the use of physical intervention. Returning to school, I implemented the model in my classroom, and experienced the success of the approach at first hand. I resolved to continue training and consequently arranged to attend the two week summer school in August 2001, at IABA in Los Angeles, working alongside LaVigna and Willis and completing competency-based training in the assessment and analysis of severe and challenging behaviour.

Upon returning to the UK, I found that such was my commitment to the multi-element model and its potential benefits for all children whose behaviours challenge, that I was no longer satisfied with implementing it in my own classroom: I wanted to make the approach available to as many children as possible. I therefore took the decision to leave my teaching post in July 2002, and work towards establishing myself as an independent behaviour consultant. My first step on this path was to study for a Masters degree, and I consequently enrolled at the University of Manchester in September 2002. After successfully completing the course, my M.Ed in Educational Psychology was conferred in December 2003.

Current projects

I have been self-employed as an independent behaviour consultant since September 2002, and have been engaged within this time to fulfil a number of duties, including:

  • being contracted by Cheshire Education Authority/individual schools to continue to train all staff in the SLD sector, in the IABA approach to solving behaviour challenges

  • being contracted by the University of Birmingham, as a regional tutor, to support distance-learning students on their courses of study (PMLD and Challenging Behaviour)

  • being contracted by the University of Manchester, to deliver lectures to Masters students on challenging behaviour and teaching approaches for pupils with severe learning disabilities

  • being contracted by schools within the special education sector to carry out both brief and comprehensive behavioural assessments on pupils who are experiencing major difficulties,to produce support plans and to train staff on how to implement these plans, to bring about significant behavioural change

  • being contracted by an independent organisation which provides educational and residential services for children with emotional, behavioural and complex needs, to provide behavioural support and guidance, and to co-ordinate all aspects of therapeutic provision

  • working with parents of children in both the mainstream and special education sectors, within their own homes, to develop strategies for overcoming various difficulties (eg behavioural issues, problems associated with autism and Aspergers Syndrome)

  • I have also sought to keep in touch with educational initiatives at the grass roots level, by doing occasional teaching within some of the above settings

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