Every book, poster, chart and card we make comes from the same place: a practical, person-centred approach to behaviour change that works in everyday life, not just in a therapy room.
Behaviour is what we do, not who we are
We start from a simple belief: behaviour is not who someone is, it's what they do, and it's a form of communication. Every person is worthy of respect and understanding, whatever their behaviour. Our aim is to help the people supporting them understand why a behaviour is happening, and then build the skills and choices that make a different behaviour possible.
The Body Life Skills approach
The Body Life Skills program is the key method behind The Behaviour Change Compass. It takes the principles of functional behaviour assessment, the process practitioners use to understand what a behaviour is communicating and what it achieves for the person, and simplifies them so families, educators and support teams can use them every day.
In practice, that means:
- Noticing the early signs in the body before behaviour escalates.
- Naming what's happening with shared words and visuals, such as the colour-coded levels of the Behaviour/Anxiety Scale.
- Choosing from clear options for what to do next, set out in I Choose Charts.
- Practising skills when calm, so they're there when they're needed.
- Staying consistent across home, school, work and the community.
Our Body Life Skills Cycle and Body Life Skills Program posters set out the method on a single page.
Foundations for lasting change
Lasting behaviour change needs solid foundations. Quick fixes built on wobbly ones rarely hold. That's why our Behaviour Change Posters explain the principles behind the strategies, from the sequence of behaviour to consistency, blockages to change and the ingredients that support it. When everyone understands the "why", it's much easier to stay consistent with the "how".
Why visual, and why it travels
People could often understand a strategy during a session. The hard part was remembering and applying it in the moment, in the places where life actually happens. Visual prompts close that gap. A chart on the wall, a card on a lanyard or a scale on the fridge is there when words aren't, reduces the load on a stressed brain, and means the same thing to every person in someone's support team.
So we design every resource to be:
- Simple – clear words, colours and pictures that are quick to take in.
- Respectful – focused on skills and choices, never blame.
- Consistent – the same tool and the same language at home, at school and in therapy.
- Practical – ready to use, with templates and worked examples.
Research and evidence
Our approach is grounded in practice and supported by research:
- Visual supports are one of 28 evidence-based practices for autistic children, youth and young adults identified in a review of 972 studies by the National Clearinghouse on Autism Evidence and Practice (Steinbrenner et al., 2020).
- Explicitly teaching social and emotional skills reduced disruptive behaviour and emotional distress, and improved academic achievement, across 213 school programs involving more than 270,000 students (Durlak et al., 2011).
- Families and schools working together improved children's adaptive behaviour and social skills in a randomised trial of conjoint behavioural consultation (Sheridan et al., 2012).
- Whole-school consistency with shared expectations significantly reduced suspensions and office discipline referrals (Bradshaw et al., 2010).
You can read more about this research, with links to the sources, on our Behaviour Change Blog.
Meet the creator
The Behaviour Change Compass was created by Tanya Curtis, a behaviour change expert who has worked as a behaviour specialist since 2002. Tanya has supported children, teenagers and adults across a wide range of needs and settings, and saw again and again that the hardest part of behaviour change was applying strategies consistently in daily life. Our resources are her answer to that challenge. Read our story.
Start with one tool
You don't need to change everything at once. Pick one situation, one tool and one shared phrase, and build from there. Browse all resources and use the Focus area filter to find the right starting point, or read our FAQs.
Our resources provide general information and practical tools. They are not a substitute for individual professional advice.