Happy Thanksgiving

We want to wish all of our clients, employees, and colleagues a very Happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy this precious time with your family even if a Zoom Thanksgiving is the safest option for everyone.

ABS Celebrates 10 Amazing Years!!

Cheers to ABS as we celebrate 10 amazing years!

Thank you to all of our families who have selected us as your ABA provider and for teaching us along the way!

Thank you to all of our employees, whom we refer to as the ABS family! We are so proud of the work that you do day after day. Thank you for helping us grow and for giving us feedback on how to be a better employer for you.

Cheers!

Connecticut Local Author with Autism

I am a huge fan of Sarah Cody at WTNH News 8. She makes an effort to cover important stories related to individuals with disabilities.

This story is about a young man with autism who is now a published author! It is such a feel good story during these COVID times.

Missy on Rants with Justin & Joe!

So Justin and Joe have decided that they miss each other during COVID. One strategy that they have implemented is to offer their segments called Rants with Justin & Joe. Each rant is given a chapter name and features a leader with something to say about a topic related to ABA.

I love that Justin and Joe have decided to disseminate information about ABA in a new way. These events are free for participants but they cap the event in order to keep it intimate. Some of the past topics have included Chapter 2 with Dr. Bob Ross who chatted about current and past posts on social media related to behavior analysis and intervention for individuals diagnosed with ASD and Chapter 4 with Dr. Ron Leaf who chatted about the early days of ABA intervention with Lovaas himself.

So you can imagine my excitement when they asked if I would join them for Chapter 8. Today we will be chatting about different perspectives on ABA. While I’m a BCBA and have a professional perspective, I’m going to focus today on my role as a sibling and guardian for Mac and how ABA has helped him. I hope you can join us!

Mary Barbera Podcast

If you don’t know about Dr. Barbera, I highly recommend that you get your reading hat (or listening hat) on and learn! For years, I was familiar with her work but only recently got to meet her.

You can follow her blog here: https://www.marybarbera.com/blog/

You can follow her podcast here: https://www.marybarbera.com/turn-autism-around-podcast/

And you can get her books here: https://www.marybarbera.com/the-verbal-behavior-approach-book/ Please note, only one book is available right now but her new book will be forthcoming in 2021.

And, not too long ago, Dr. Barbera and I sat down to discuss some of the co-occuring medical conditions of autism. Go ahead and check it out! https://www.marybarbera.com/medical-conditions-associated-autism/

BCBA Webinar Recordings Available (for credit!)

How is everyone holding up? Have you gone stir crazy yet? I live in CT and our kids have been out of school since Thursday, March 12th! Lord, hear our prayer!

A number of people have reached out about our Webinar schedule going forward (I promise it is forthcoming). But additionally, a few of you requested if you could obtain the recording from a previous webinar.

We do not normally sell our recordings because I, personally, feel that the synchronous option allows for quality interaction with Q&A. However, given the current situation with many conferences canceled, I will make the following webinars available for purchase at $10 each. This INCLUDES your ability to earn BACB CEs.

Available recordings include:

• Special Education Law and Ethics for Behavior Analysts
• Ethical Issues in Conducting FBAs and Developing BIPs
• Ethical Issues in Using ABA to Address Feeding
• Ethical Issues in Supervision (Supervision Credit Only; Uses the BACB 2.0 Curriculum)
• Ethical Issues in Billing for ABA Services
• Ethical Issues in Social Media
• ABCs of Confidentiality (meets ethics requirement and addresses BACB, HIPAA, HITECH, IDEIA, and FERPA)
• Ethical Issues in AAC
• Using Excel to Analyze and Display FBA and FA Data (3 credits; no ethics)

To register, simply follow this link: https://www.appliedbehavioralstrategies.com/continuing-education.html When you scroll to the bottom of the page there is a form. Use it to enter the information about the webinar recording you would like to purchase (e.g., brief title, date, etc).

For price enter the amount you owe ($10 per recording). Once it is all entered, then click the paypal button to pay.

Don’t forget about our FREE journal club! You could earn up to 12 free CEs per year by reading a designated article and signing on to participate.

Feel free to comment below if you have questions or contact the office for more information at info at applied behavioral strategies dot com.

Journal Club on Supervision Resources

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Our FREE journal club met on Monday night. We discussed a wonderful article by Katie Lynn Garza, Heather M. McGee, Yannick A. Schenk, & Rebecca R. Wiskirchen. You may access the article here. If you are supervising trainees (formerly known as candidates), this is a must read article! Additionally, the authors have provided a number of electronic resources which you may access here by scrolling to the bottom of the page. While the article was published in 2018, the BACB published a new Supervision Curriculum (2.0) in 2019 so readers are encouraged to read that new curriculum as a supplement to this article.

The authors discuss the process of supervision for trainees in behavior analysis. They discuss the importance of a systematic approach to supervision combined with the need to utilize the literature from Organizational Behavior Management (OBM) to guide us in this process.

The authors discuss the importance of establishing a supervisory relationship and completing a skills assessment. The authors then describe how to use a job model to outline the performance expectations across various activities within a job. Each activity is then broken down to various steps/tasks which are then cross-referenced to the BACB Task List. For this, the authors provide a great resource which readers may incorporate into their own supervisory practices. The authors provide examples for how to set goals with trainees. They provide a great resource for this as well.

Our journal club attendees loved all the resources provided in this article. However, I personally enjoyed the story board resource. In this, the authors demonstrated how to take the Behavioral Skills Training (BST) and apply new learning within. For example, if you are teaching your trainee how to complete an IISCA, then you take the storyboard and break down the different steps of BST and apply to IISCA and how you will teach your trainee about IISCA.

Finally, the authors describe the importance of on-going progress monitoring and feedback for your trainees. They discuss the need to collect observational data on your supervisee and then the need to graph that progress. In our journal club, we discussed several different ways to measure and graph progress of trainees within the supervision process.

We hope you enjoy this article as much as we did. If you are interested in joining our free journal club, email us at info at applied behavioral strategies dot com. Participants can earn up to 12 continuing education credits per year (in the area of learning).

For more of our posts on supervision, check out these posts:

Supervision of candidates

How much supervision is necessary?

Upcoming 2020 Webinars!

We have a few upcoming webinars that you may want to register for. Check out our lineup! There are 2 offer codes running right now. One is related to my recent Behavioral Observations Podcast with Matt Ciccoria and the other is NEW. If you indicate that you saw it on the blog when you register, you can enroll for just $25 for any regular course or $50 for the 8-hour Supervision Course. Note that the 8-hour course is limited to 10 participants due to it’s intensity.

Ethical Issues in Billing for ABA Services on January 23rd 1pm-5pm Eastern

Ethical Issues in Supervision & Training (Meets Supervision Requirement) on February 6th 1pm-4pm Eastern

Supervision Part 2 (Meets 8-hour requirement when taken with Ethical Issues in Supervision & Training) on February 7th 12pm-5pm Eastern

Ethical Issues in Completing FBAs and Developing BIPs on Feb 20th 1pm-5pm Eastern

SPED Law and Ethical Issues for Behavior Analysts on March 12th 1pm-5pm Eastern

Missy on Behavioral Observations Podcast!

It has been a super busy fall! It all started in August when I spoke at the National Autism Conference in State College, PA. I spoke on Special Education Law and also on Ethical Issues in Using ABA to Address Feeding. This conference is actually how Matt Ciccoria and I got introduced. Jen Farris saw me speak on SPED Law and she reached out to Matt and then made the introduction. Conferences are truly for networking! For follow up on the SPED Talk, see my previous blog post.

Next up was FABA Conference! I served as the discussant on a lively panel regarding Ethical Issues in Functional Analysis and presented on the hot topic of Ethical Issues in Assessment. We are working on papers for both of these talks!

This was followed by the 19th Annual CARDAAC Conference in Baltimore with the fine team at Kennedy Krieger. There I spoke on PBIS Strategies at Tier 2 and Tier 3 implementation levels.

Once I finally stopped traveling, I sat down with Matt! I was incredibly nervous about doing this. But Matt put me right at ease. I seriously could have talked to him for hours on this topic! Take a moment to listen to the podcast when you are driving from client to client or school to school. You can download the podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ethics-school-consultation-for-bcbas-session-101-missy/id1086413253?i=1000457591580 or you can go to the website for all the show notes here: https://behavioralobservations.com/the-ethics-of-school-consultation-for-bcbas-session-101-with-missy-olive/

There is a teaser too! If you listen to the show, you will find out about some upcoming CEs that are available! This special will be available for any of the webinars mentioned in the podcast through 2020!

SEEK CT 2019 Parent Empowerment Conference

Applied Behavior Strategies is a proud sponsor of the Back-to-School: Special Education Parent Empowerment Conference on Saturday, October 5th in New Haven CT!  The conference is focused on trending special education issues and must-know advocacy skills to prepare for a successful school year. Parents and professionals should attend. You can learn more about this important event or buy tickets here: https://seekct.com/annual-conference  Online tickets $65. At the door $85. Don’t miss out!