ABA Assessment

Here are some components of our ABA Assessment, conducted by our highly trained and experienced BCBAs!

The assessment will begin with a parent interview designed to help guide the rest of the individualized assessment process. Parents will be asked questions about their child’s daily routine, strengths, weaknesses, likes and dislikes, and any noticed patterns regarding their child’s maladaptive behaviors (screaming, biting, hitting, throwing, self-injurious behavior, etc.). This helps our professionals get to know your child as much as it aids our working relationship moving forward with your child’s therapy!

Depending on your child’s needs, a variety of standardized assessments may be used (e.g. PEAK Assessment, ABLLS-R, VB-MAPP, Essential for Living). In addition, our individualized Nevada Autism Center Assessment will be used to identify your child’s current language and social skills.

Different from the parent interview, these types of standardized and center-specific assessments are conducted while interacting with or observing your child. Direct assessments in our Las vegas center allow the BCBA to observe the target behaviors and any maintaining variables in a way that a description on paper simply could not!

These assessments will be a central part of the development of your child’s therapy program(s).

A functional assessment will also be conducted to help determine the reason or purpose that challenging behavior occurs. Understanding the function of challenging behavior will aid in the development of an individualized behavior plan focused on teaching alternative ways for your child to get their needs and desires met.

For example, if it is determined as a part of the ABA Assessment that your child’s head-banging behavior is to access attention from an adult, the BCBA can develop a behavior intervention plan to teach alternative, appropriate behavior (such as raising her hand or saying “excuse me”) and fade out the self-injurious behavior.

After assessments have been completed, our BCBAs will develop an individualized treatment plan designed to increase appropriate functional and adaptive skills and decrease challenging behaviors.

The treatment plan will include assessment results, a behavior plan, skill acquisition goals, and family goals. Once complete, we will have a meeting with parents/caregivers to review the treatment plan and ensure we have addressed the needs and desires of the family as well.

This is a great time to ask questions, obtain clarification, or request changes to the treatment plan! Remember, YOU are a key part of your child’s therapy, and we want you to be included every step of the way! This will include parent training at least once per week to review your child’s goals, progress made, and how you can help them further progress at home!

After a review of the treatment plan, your child’s ABA therapy start date can be determined. During this time, your child’s BCBA will train a Registered Behavior Technician (RBT) to implement your child’s ABA program in Las Vegas with fidelity. Upon conclusion of the program introduction sessions, all staff will be fully trained on both the behavior plan and skill acquisition goals for your child.

A SAMPLE Program Introduction and first steps for each new case for the RBT working with your child can be found below. Remember that this is a *sample*, as all treatment plans are 100% unique and custom to each child at our center.

Goals:

• independent transitions to the table
• compliant readiness/replacement behaviors to begin reinforcing in that context

Introduce all the programs, or as many as behavior permits and collect baseline data on all conducted programs. Track behavior data; ensure RBTs can implement everything with acceptable fidelity. At the end we want sessions to be able to begin!

• Be prepared! Have your materials such as ELB data forms ready to go and your materials gathered. Come ready with a game plan, flexibility, and a positive attitude.
• Be systematic in your approach to establishing a rapport with the child. Work on pairing and preference assessments and sampling non-contingent use of previously identified preferences and suspected reinforcement.
• Strategically determine when to begin making identified preferences contingent as implementing operant system(s) which may require systematic introduction (e.g., token program to begin conditioning the system).

• Behavior Definitions and suspected functions of target behaviors are then reviewed with RBTs to ensure understanding and treatment fidelity.
• Operant systems/replacement behavior acquisitions and behavior reduction technologies reviewed, and implementation is modeled for their readiness with subsequent fidelity checks and feedback.

All programs that are introduced must include fidelity checks with RBTs. This is to ensure everyone working with your child knows how to run programs and that everyone does it the same way to avoid confusion.

Supervisors of the RBTS will discuss all programs and then introduce model-appropriate implementation and data collection. The RBT may be asked to data collect while BCBA runs the program to determine Interobserver Agreement (IOA). This step ensures the RBT working with your child records the same data that another trained professional would collect to determine the accuracy of the data.

Then we are off! A start date will be determined, and training will begin with the RBT in the meantime. We look forward to working with your family and making a difference in your child’s life!

Thank you again for trusting your child with our professionals at Nevada Autism Center!