The exponential growth of the ABA field has created a supervision crisis that most individual practitioners feel but that few organizations have systematically addressed. The number of individuals seeking BCBA certification has grown dramatically over the past decade, while the pool of experienced BCBAs available to provide quality supervision has not grown proportionally.
Provider: BehaviorLive — via Oregon Association for Behavior Analysis
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Join Free →With the rapid growth of our field, maintaining quality in clinical services is a concern for many practitioners and agencies. Supervision and training practices have become acutely important as the demand for supervision continues to increase, and the availability of experienced BCBA supervisors becomes more limited. The BACB 2022 Eligibility Requirements for supervised fieldwork and BACB Supervision Training Curriculum Outline 2.0 presented a challenge and opportunity to BCBA and ABA agencies providing supervision to trainees. The increased expectations for total training hours, monthly supervision contacts, documentation, and competency-based approaches to supervision require more resources on the part of BCBA supervisors and ABA agencies, when the demand for supervision is at an all-time high. To address this challenge, the author and her colleagues developed a supervisor program for their agency, which they piloted and refined over the past few years. Their goals included providing high-quality supervision to BACB trainees, increasing exam pass rates and BCBA retention, and reducing administrative burden for BCBA supervisors. This supervision program has been successfully implemented across ABA agencies in several states. In social validity surveys, BCBA supervisors who participated in the program reported increased sense of readiness to set clear expectations in supervision, implement systems to evaluate the effectiveness of their supervision practices, and document feedback provided during supervision. Initial data on trainee outcomes suggests that exam pass rates and retention of new BCBAs have increased. Recommendations for implementing similar supervision programs will be provided, and challenges to implementation will be discussed.
| Certification Body | Credits | Type |
|---|---|---|
| BACB® | 1 | Supervision |
Analise Herrera has worked in the ABA industry since 2008. She began her career as a behavior technician and received her BCBA certification in 2014 following completion of a Masters in Applied Behavior Analysis from St. Cloud State University. Analise's early career was spent at Play Connections Autism Services, a small locally owned ABA clinic in Beaverton, Oregon. In 2018, Play Connections joined the LEARN Behavioral Network. During this transition, Analise acted as Assistant Clinical Director, opening a second clinic in the Portland Metro area. Analise became the Director of Technician Training in fall of 2022, launching a high quality, hybrid new hire training program for all behavior technicians joining LEARN. The Training Leadership team works collaboratively with other departments within LEARN Behavioral to evolve training practices and achieve training at high volumes without compromising quality. Outside of LEARN Behavioral, Analise has served as the President for the Oregon Association for Behavior Analysis (ORABA) for the last two years and previously served as the Public Policy Co-chair for ORABA. Analise is dedicated to an equitable and inclusive environment for future behavior analysts.
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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.