Keynote Address and Awards Ceremony: The Past, Present, and Future of Autism Service Delivery is the kind of topic that looks straightforward until it collides with the speed, ambiguity, and competing demands of clinical documentation, payer communication, supervision records, and leadership review. In Keynote Address and Awards Ceremony: The Past, Present, and Future of Autism Service Delivery, for this course, the practical stakes show up in service continuity, accurate reporting, and defensible clinical decisions, not in abstract discussion alone.
Provider: BehaviorLive — via Florida Association of Behavior Analysis
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Join Free →The delivery of autism services has changed dramatically over the past few decades, and all indications are that more dramatic change is on the way. Services needed by an individual with autism may range from medical to therapeutic to legal to educational and beyond. Each of these categories of services look different now in terms of substance, location, and financing than they did just 20 years ago. The population accessing services also looks different, with a broadening of the definition of the spectrum and distinct modifications of the diagnostic criteria that have had significant policy implications. The autism population increasingly includes self-advocates who trumpet neurodiversity, sometimes leaving individuals profoundly impaired by autism and their families feeling left out. Rifts abound in the autism community, if there even is an "autism community." Autism prevalence has skyrocketed, even in the last few years, for partially unknown reasons. The financing of autism services has changed, with the arrival of private health insurance coverage for certain autism services, shifting eligibility requirements, and legal protections for mental health services playing a role. This has led to increased waitlists and fierce battles over who does and does deserve care/coverage. Some have even eschewed the valuable protections afforded by mental health parity laws for fear, or dislike, of autism being considered a mental health condition. Professions have grown around the autism diagnosis, with the ABA profession seeing perhaps the wildest exponential growth. The growth and, at times, questionable quality attendant to such rapid growth pose a threat to the future of funding for treatment. Further exacerbating the problem is the dearth of appropriate and rigorous standards and monitoring. Other professions such as research and technology have also benefited from escalating prevalence rates. Business interests have shifted, particularly of late as insurance reimbursement becomes consistent and private equity has taken interest. Demand has exploded for support from state agencies, requiring the pie to be split into increasingly smaller pieces. Those who need support the most are, at times, less able to find it now than when autism was a rare disorder. The prognosis for individuals with autism has experienced significant positive change, but has it changed enough? General healthcare services remain elusive and are generally not tailored to the needs of people with autism. Huge gaps persist, and needs are not being met for individuals and their families. How far have we come, where do we need to go, and how will autism services look 10 or 20 years from now? Join Lorri Unumb, Esq. for a discussion of the good, the bad, and the ugly of autism service delivery.
| Certification Body | Credits | Type |
|---|---|---|
| BACB® | 1 | General |
| COA | 1 | — |
| FL MH/PSY | 1 | — |
Lorri Shealy Unumb is a lawyer, mother of three young adult boys, and an internationally renowned autism advocate. She began her career as an appellate attorney with the United States Department of Justice and then as a full-time law professor. Following her son’s diagnosis with autism, she began volunteering for autism causes, writing ground-breaking autism insurance legislation for South Carolina (“Ryan’s Law”) that passed in 2007 and served as the catalyst for the national movement toward autism insurance reform. She served for a decade as the national head of state government affairs for Autism Speaks and since 2019 as the CEO of The Council of Autism Service Providers. Lorri is also the founder of the annual Autism Law Summit, now in its 19th year, and is co-author of the law school textbook “Autism and the Law.” In 2010, she founded the Autism Academy of South Carolina, a nonprofit ABA center now known as The Unumb Center for Neurodevelopment. In 2025, she founded “Unumb Place,” a residential program for adults with autism.
Dig into the research behind this topic — plain-English summaries written for BCBAs.
279 research articles with practitioner takeaways
258 research articles with practitioner takeaways
239 research articles with practitioner takeaways
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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.