Are Function-Based Interventions for Students with Emotional/Behavioral Disorders Trauma Informed? A Systematic Review
Function-based BIPs rarely include trauma-informed care—add safety, coping skills, and family voice to every plan.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Pollack et al. (2024) read 56 studies about function-based behavior plans for students with emotional or behavioral disorders.
They asked: do these plans include trauma-informed care? They looked for things like teaching coping skills, building trust, and honoring family culture.
The team coded every article to see how many trauma-smart pieces were baked into the FBA-to-BIP process.
What they found
Only a handful of the 56 studies mentioned trauma at all.
Most plans stopped at escape, attention, tangible, or sensory functions. They skipped safety, relationships, and cultural fit.
The review did spot 45 strategies that could be trauma-informed, but they were rarely labeled or used that way.
How this fits with other research
Camargo et al. (2014), Dudley et al. (2019), and Menezes et al. (2021) all show that school-based behavior plans can work. Their reviews praise clear, function-based tactics for kids with autism or mixed needs.
Pollack’s team agrees the tactics work, but says we are missing a layer. Without trauma lenses, we risk re-triggering students who have abuse or neglect histories.
Luiselli (1991) gave us the first FBA decision tree. Pollack updates that legacy by urging us to add safety, choice, and cultural checks before we pick an intervention.
Why it matters
If you write BIPs for students with EBD, add three quick steps. First, ask about trauma history in your FBA interview. Second, list at least one coping or relationship skill as a replacement behavior. Third, share the plan with the family to be sure it fits their values. These moves take five extra minutes and can stop a cycle of re-traumatization while still using the function-based tools we know work.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Students with emotional/behavioral disorders (EBD) commonly engage in both externalizing and internalizing behaviors—a behavioral profile that has been connected to childhood trauma. Although the efficacy of function-based interventions for students with EBD has been documented, the extent to which these interventions align with principles of trauma-informed care (TIC) is unknown. We conducted a systematic review of function-based intervention studies for students with EBD to evaluate whether and how these interventions incorporated critical elements of TIC. We identified 56 articles that met the eligibility criteria and used an iterative process to identify intervention practices consistent with each of six pillars of TIC, then evaluated the extent to which interventions in the study sample incorporated these practices. Despite identifying 45 function-based intervention practices aligned with pillars of TIC, we found most of these practices were absent in most interventions. We identified teaching skills, building healthy relationships, and including family, culture, and community as three pillars of TIC that warrant more attention when developing function-based interventions for students with EBD. For pillars of TIC that lack a strong empirical foundation in behavior analysis, we point to related literatures and disciplines with potential to inform next steps in behavior analytic research and practice.
Behavior Analysis in Practice, 2024 · doi:10.1007/s40617-023-00893-y