By Sam Blanco, PhD, LBA, BCBA-D

I’ve been working with families with autism for over 25 years, and have witnessed firsthand the major shifts in provision of ABA services. We’re living in a time where far more families have access to services, but as the services have become more available the human connection seems to have gotten lost.

I’d like to take a little time to consider how you can approach your work as a BCBA given the very real barriers in place to building strong connections with parents and caregivers. Whether you’re working in a center where parents drop their kids off for services, working to provide in-person parent training once every week through in-home services, or trying to build a rapport via telehealth, there are strategies you can put in place to address the challenges discussed above.

• Start off with a clear explanation of expectations. You need buy-in from the parents and caregivers to engage with parent sessions. Discuss with them their role in the provision of services. And ask them about why they sought out ABA services in the first place.  It can be useful to create your own simple parent contract that you go over and sign together about everyone’s expectations and roles.
• Understand your parents. What are their priorities? Their values? Their concerns? An open dialogue should be occurring in which parents can share concerns about potential interventions as well as ideas they may have. Some ideas for structuring this might include, introductory parent surveys about their expectations and wishes for surveys, having parents write a mission statement about their overall goal for services, or sitting down to align on priorities for all the skills they may want to focus on.
• Identify where you and the parents align. You need to ensure you and the parents are on the same page about expectations across the board, as well as treatment priorities. By now, you’re probably seeing that all of this is about communication communication communication. When you’re discussing an intervention, you should be checking for alignment on the goal itself, prompting, the timing of interventions, settings for interventions, and reinforcers. Be detailed!
• Lead your team with intention. Think beyond insurance requirements and IEPs. Considering the values and priorities of the parents, what do you need to focus on for each session. Be clear about the goal of each session. It’s not simply a parent training session or supervision session. There should be one or more goals you can clearly define and understand how you intend to achieve those goals in each session.
• Check in. Once you have established expectations and alignment, check in on a regular basis (monthly or quarterly) about expectations, priorities, values, and concerns.

About the Author

Sam has been working with children with autism for 25 years. She loves working with new BCBAs and students pursuing their BCBAs. She is the Chief Clinical Officer at BK Behavior.

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