Compassionate care has become a central concern in the ABA field not because practitioners lack empathy, but because the structural demands of behavioral healthcare — high caseloads, documentation requirements, productivity metrics, and the emotional weight of working with clients experiencing significant distress — create conditions where compassionate responding can be difficult to sustain. Alison Carris's session on living the value of compassionate care addresses this challenge directly, using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) as a framework for helping practitioners maintain and deepen their therapeutic presence.
Provider: BehaviorLive — via Illinois Association of Behavior Analysis
Take This Course →Including ethics, supervision, and topics like this one. New live CEU every Wednesday.
Join Free →Compassionate care is not only essential for clients but also for the well-being of ourselves, as practitioners. And yet, there remains disagreement about what compassionate care truly looks like. In this 1-hour conversation, we'll discuss how Acceptance and Commitment Therapy's (ACT) core principles—such as mindfulness, values-based action, and psychological flexibility—can help practitioners improve their therapeutic relationships, better manage stress, and foster resilience in both themselves and their clients. This session aims to empower behavior analysts to live their values more fully, and in turn, make their work more impactful and sustainable.
| Certification Body | Credits | Type |
|---|---|---|
| BACB® | 1 | General |
| COA | 0 | — |
Ali is a passionate wife, partner, voracious reader, karaoke junkie, Board Certified Behavior Analyst, and Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor, with two tiny humans who call her mom. Originally from Detroit, Michigan, she moved to Chicago to pursue her love of theatre and serendipitously discovered the world of behavior analysis. Ali earned a Master of Arts degree in 2011 in Clinical Psychology with specializations in both Applied Behavior Analysis and Counseling. Since then, she has developed extensive experience working with adolescents and adults within the neurodiverse community. With a foundation in Contextual Behavior Science, Ali began Behavioral Learning in 2020, a clinical behavior analytic organization focused on helping individuals, families, and supervisees develop psychological flexibility and ultimately live a life they value. Professionally, Ali’s experience over the past 15+ years is expansive, as a graduate level instructor, community mental health provider, school therapist, behavior health clinician, supervisor, and counselor. She is a dynamic speaker with a resume of professional speaking engagements at various organizations such as Black Applied Behavior Analysts, Illinois Counseling Association, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, and others. Ali currently serves as a Board Member of the Illinois Association for Behavior Analysis as Communications Coordinator and a reviewer for the professional journal, Behavior Analysis in Practice. Ali is an empathic provider who seeks to bridge the gap between mental and behavioral health through compassionate care.
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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.