Behavior analysts working in applied settings regularly encounter situations that involve significant ethical complexity and potential risk to clients. This course, presented by Hillary Laney, addresses the critical need for structured approaches to ethical risk assessment and mitigation in behavior analytic practice.
Provider: BehaviorLive — via Women in Behavior Analysis
Take This Course →Including ethics, supervision, and topics like this one. New live CEU every Wednesday.
Join Free →According to Colombo et al. (2020), 43% of clinicians faced their first challenging case without adequate support, emphasizing the need for ongoing supervision and collaborative decision-making. Additionally, with an estimated 50% of children with autism engaging in severe challenging behaviors (Hill et al., 2015), clinicians need to be equipped with tools to navigate ethical dilemmas, prioritize client dignity, and apply structured decision-making to reduce harm. Research on ethical decision-making models suggests that ethical dilemmas in behavior analysis involve a complex sequence of responses, aligning with behavior chain frameworks that emphasize stepwise problem-solving (Marya et al., 2022). A systematic review of 55 ethical decision-making models across various disciplines found that almost all models (95%) followed a sequential process, reinforcing the importance of structured frameworks to guide clinical decisions (Suarez et al., 2022). This review highlights that behavior analysts benefit from structured ethical models that incorporate context-specific variables and prioritize client-centered care. By integrating standardized risk categorization and a collaborative supervision model, this approach fosters ethical, effective, and client-centered care. Clinicians will learn strategies for categorizing risk levels, developing tiered support systems, and implementing evidence-based behavior-change interventions. Additionally, the session will include a data review of cases where this structured decision-making approach has been applied, evaluating its impact on clinical outcomes.
| Certification Body | Credits | Type |
|---|---|---|
| BACB® | 1 | Ethics |
| COA | 1 | — |
Hillary Laney, BCBA, is passionate about providing services to clients with significant behavioral needs which prioritizes dignity, safety, rapport, and assent. She received her M. Ed from the University of Washington and has extensive experience as a practitioner and in supporting practitioners, agencies, and schools to provide more comprehensive services to those who need them most. Hillary currently serves as the Senior Vice President of Functional Assessment and Treatment at Centria Autism. She is responsible for staff development and training oversight across the agency in the implementation of assent-based interventions including; Assent Based Care, Universal Protocols, Practical Functional Assessment, and Skill-Based Treatment. In the past year, Hillary has overseen the training of over 300 supervising clinicians and her team has supported over 500 successful Practical Functional Assessments. In her free time, she volunteers moderating the PFA & SBT Community, an online group of over 20,000 members, which provides free content for members to learn and grow in assent-based practice.
Dig into the research behind this topic — plain-English summaries written for BCBAs.
280 research articles with practitioner takeaways
258 research articles with practitioner takeaways
244 research articles with practitioner takeaways
You earn CEUs from a dozen different places. Upload any certificate — from here, your employer, conferences, wherever — and always know exactly where you stand. Learning, Ethics, Supervision, all handled.
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All behavior-analytic intervention is individualized. The information on this page is for educational purposes and does not constitute clinical advice. Treatment decisions should be informed by the best available published research, individualized assessment, and obtained with the informed consent of the client or their legal guardian. Behavior analysts are responsible for practicing within the boundaries of their competence and adhering to the BACB Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts.