Consultants or behavior specialists are likely to provide services that come in the form of either technical assistance or training. The goal of technical assistance or training is to assist the care providers to respond to behavioral crisis in a safe and effective manner and prevent future crises. In technical assistance situations, the consultant provides more direct assistance and produces products designed to result in the immediate adoption of different interventions and support strategies, with specific behavior support recommendations. The consultant takes direct responsibility for certain, pre-specified outcomes, such as conducting a functional assessment or writing a behavior support plan. In this model, rather than providing answers and directly generating materials and plans, the technical assistance provider presents general information and guides local persons through the process of decision-making and intervention design.
Additional training is given as dictated by the situation and the type of problems being presented.
There are a number of services that a consultant might provide in delivering technical assistance. The first step is to help in defining the problem. People involved in a crisis often are not able to accurately define the crisis. They may know that a severe problem exists, but may have difficulties describing it. A second type of service that a consultant might provide is to help regular support team members identify why the problem exists.