by Jessie Cooper | Oct 14, 2021
Over the course of the past year, I’ve been writing to you about standing in your own worth, your truth. I’ve taken you down many paths in the forest of life and shared both challenging and joyful paths that I have walked down. Through writing to you about personal experiences I have healed and still seek to heal further. Life is full of encounters and experiences that can deliver this; for us to hold each moment of being human in our hearts to live a life of freedom.
What I haven’t written to you about in detail is my career and the work that started my journey. This past week I was recertified by Board Certification as a Behavior Analyst for a fourth time marking a decade as a BCBA. This summer I will celebrate a decade as a BCBA entrepreneur as the owner of Instructional ABA Consultants. It was emotions and injustice that brought me to my career and success. This week I’d like to share my professional journey.
Starting a Career Helping with ASD
My work in the field of autism began fifteen years ago when I was obtaining my bachelor’s degree at the Ohio State University (OSU) in human development focusing on early childhood. I was curious about how environments shaped the developmental outcomes of children. During my time at OSU, I worked in their preschool program and was a home-based therapist for two children with autism using applied behavior analysis (ABA).
This was back in the early 2000s and in both cases, the children were accessing services but their ASD symptoms were not being treated. The ABA program I was working under was state-funded and both children I worked with had high levels of physical aggression. Neither child had a treatment plan that actually alleviated the aggression. I was passionate about the kids and knew from my undergraduate work that environments mattered. In the fall of 2009, I began my master’s degree in Applied Behavior Analysis at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology.
My choice to begin a master’s degree stemmed from a desire to understand why aggression, as well as other aberrant behaviors, occurred in children. I also wanted to understand how applied behavior analysis treated autism symptoms in early childhood. During my master’s degree, I worked as an early childhood line therapist and joined the Illinois Crisis Prevention Network (ICPN) as my internship. I had to work during my degrees to pay my bills and at the time was focused on nothing outside of my career. I was thirsty to learn so I could create change for children.
Working at the ICPN
As I began working on the ICPN I was introduced to adults with mental illness and developmental disabilities. I quickly fell in love with the population and saw how lack of access to quality treatment affected their lives. In spending the first five years of my career focused on children I had never really thought about where they would go when they grew up. I had never thought about the adults with disabilities who had never gained access to care as children themselves. Most of the adults I served at the time had been raised in state-run institutions. Through my work with the adults, my eyes were opened to not only what happens immediately with small children with autism who do not have access to care, but also what can happen in adulthood.
During my time at the ICPN, I worked to gain my associate certification first and followed it up with BCBA board certification. I was given the opportunity of a caseload of clients (from children to geriatrics) who needed immediate crisis support; first under supervision, then as my own caseload. During this time I was wildly in love with my job but fiercely angry at the lack of care my clients received.
As a young woman, I cannot tell you the number of parents’ hands I held as we talked about their child’s (young or adult) experience that led to a crisis. The stories they told me both broke my heart and filled me with a fire to change their experience. Time after time the constant theme that led to a crisis was lack of intervention due to either a lack of funding or an unethical & uncaring therapy team. I worked with each client and family to stabilize their loved ones from crisis to community-functioning. Without access to outside care of the crisis team, success was usually not sustainable.
Changing the Game
In 2012 I decided to change that. I had met my own personal mission to understand aberrant behaviors and the impact of the environment on childhood development. Now, I know through science that the environment is the key predictor of outcome. I also knew that applied behavior analysis provided a scientific approach to at-risk symptoms of autism as well as behaviors.
With my own hands, through applied behavior analysis, I was able to change the outcome of lives for the better. I wanted to open a private practice that used these skills to close the gap in services based on funding sources. I also wanted to challenge my field ethically to create a place where all of our clients received quality care. A decade ago this was not the case. Even today ABA has mountains to climb regarding regulating quality care for all families.
It’s been a decade since I sat for my boards and I still have a fire burning in me fueled by what our science can do to help serve clients who otherwise would not have access to therapy. I went from just me to five locations, across three states, with a team of professionals who have the same passion. Each day I wake up knowing that we (not just me) are creating lasting change. Learning to run a company is for a different blog but as a BCBA I know I have a decade to be proud of.
To the next decade of service. Wherever we may go.
Xoxo,
Jessie
by IABA Team | Oct 12, 2021
Many parents of a child with ASD wonder what the best therapy method for their child is. In-home therapy (in tandem with other recommended programs) is a critical part of the development of any child with ASD.
In-home ABA therapy can be conducted by a licensed therapist or the parents on a daily basis. Let’s take a look at how in-home ABA therapy works and how it can benefit your child’s development.
In-Home ABA Therapy: How it Works
A huge benefit of in-home therapy is the comfort for both parents and children. If you sign up for professional in-home therapy, an ABA therapist will come to your home to work with your child. This minimizes driving time by seamlessly fitting therapy without travel into your everyday routine. In-home ABA therapy is very useful for families who have issues with transportation.
Buying therapy materials for professional in-home ABA therapy is not necessary. The therapist will use in-home materials & toys the child already has access to. ABA therapy tools for reinforcement can be almost anything: toys, snacks, social praise, etc.
ABA therapists assess what each child likes during every session. Reinforcement tools are an essential part of ABA therapy. These tools are used to help reinforce good behavior and teach a variety of different skills like communication, play, and peer interactions.
Certain behaviors may often occur in the home, making it important to change them in a familiar setting. Resisting instruction for daily tasks or problem behaviors with siblings during playtime are things that may not happen in a clinical setting.
BCBAs make assessments to pinpoint why problem behaviors happen and develop intervention strategies to treat problems as they occur. This gives many opportunities to target problematic behaviors and help change them.
During in-home sessions, an ABA therapist observes everyday interactions between the child and family members in real-time. This allows the therapist to provide quick feedback to parents on different approaches to creating parent-conducted treatment outside sessions.
In-home therapy can be used for toddlers, teens, and adults with Autism. Younger children from ages 2-5 who spend most of their time at home may benefit the most from in-home ABA therapy. A BCBA creates a treatment plan that best suits a child’s needs at home, allowing therapy to start in a familiar environment.
ABA Therapy & Family Support
Another advantage of in-home therapy is that parents and siblings can get involved in a child’s development. All family members are recommended to be active participants during in-home ABA therapy. This includes visiting relatives, grandparents, caregivers, and other regular visitors.
ABA therapists can provide support to families who want to learn more about their child’s therapy program, treatment, and development. Family engagement has been actively demonstrated to increase progress when everyone implements ABA therapy strategies outside professional sessions.
ABA therapists can guide families on how to use ABA therapy to increase appropriate behaviors while reducing problematic ones. At-home ABA therapy also helps develop sibling relationships by working on age-appropriate skills. Social activities with siblings like playing, sharing, and interacting can be strengthened by ABA therapy. Peer interactions are also encouraged among friends and close relatives.
ABA Therapy & Independent Living at Home
Independent living skills are best taught and reinforced at home. Personal hygiene skill reinforcement at home provides a natural environment for children to develop skills. Important tasks like brushing teeth, washing hands, washing face, are best reinforced where they regularly occur.
Independent living tasks are typically broken down into smaller steps with reinforcement being provided after each step is accomplished. Repeating the individual steps of a process followed by completing the process as a whole every day will help a child learn to be self-sufficient.
For early learners, in-home ABA therapy can also include daily routines. Things like toilet training, dressing, learning to tie shoes, can be taught and reinforced on a daily basis. Parents can select times that work best. Talking to your child’s BCBA can help you develop an effective schedule that will benefit your child.
Older children and teens will have different needs than younger kids. Tasks for older kids may include organizing or cleaning their room, preparing meals, and learning how to communicate (both verbally and through phones or other electronic devices).
Peer interaction for teens, things like board games, video games, or social outings with friends, can be very beneficial as well–just make sure to talk to all involved parties about any specific needs beforehand. Knowing what situations or places your teen is comfortable with can help set up a successful social outing.
Designing a template for how to develop social outings for your teen with their BCBA beforehand may help you avoid any undesirable situations. An ABA therapist can also help develop skills for situations where a teen must interact with others.
ABA Therapy from IABA Consultants
If you have questions regarding autism treatment, education, or plans using ABA therapy, we are here for you! Our goal is to make sure no family is turned away due to financial constraints. Our therapy team would love to talk to you. Find the location closest to you and give us a call. We’re here for you.
Sources
Achieve Beyond Pediatric Therapy
by IABA Team | Oct 5, 2021
Many people with ASD (autism spectrum disorder) need support when learning specific skills or new behaviors that are positive and functional. ABA therapy can be very effective with teaching skills in these common areas:
- General social skills
- Communication
- Self-help
- Motor skills
- Play skills
- Leisure activities
- Independent daily living
How is ABA Therapy Beneficial?
The basis of ABA therapy is to identify why a person engages in a particular behavior followed by creating environments that support effective, lasting change for the better. When new, helpful behaviors bring about good results, old, unhelpful behaviors begin to decrease.
ABA therapy provides beneficial information on:
- Why behaviors occur
- How certain environments can affect behavior
- The best way to create a beneficial, long-lasting therapy plan
- The most effective therapy models for changing individual behavior
ABA Therapy Expectations
ABA therapy can be conducted in clinics, schools, outside settings, and inside the home. ABA programs are managed by Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs), who are Masters-level professionals and direct care providers. In most cases BCBAs are Registered Behavior Technicians (RBTs), which is a national certification.
The role and responsibilities of the BCBA include:
- Developing a treatment plan
- Helping parents and other caregivers manage treatment plans
- Developing and conducting progress assessments
- Monitoring work conducted by other direct care providers
Depending on the intensity of the treatment, BCBAs may work with the child and direct care anywhere from multiple days per week to a few days per month.
Direct care providers are closely monitored by BCBAs to make sure the correct therapy program is being followed. It is imperative that any comprehensive ABA therapy programs are followed by all caregivers, from teachers to parents. Talking to your BCBA will help you understand their therapy program.
Typical therapy sessions include play, practicing daily activities like toileting or dressing, and structured teaching activities. ABA Sessions are customized for each child’s strengths and needs and designed to improve the quality of life for both the child and their family.
Helping parents with continuing therapeutic practices at home is a critical part of ABA therapy. Without continued reinforcement, certain behaviors may take longer to learn or even regress.
ABA Therapy from IABA Consultants
If you have questions regarding autism treatment, education, or plans using ABA therapy, we are here for you! Our goal is to make sure no family is turned away due to financial constraints. Our therapy team would love to talk to you. Find the location closest to you and give us a call. We’re here for you.
Sources
Arizona Autism United
by Jessie Cooper | Sep 30, 2021
Over the last few weeks, I’ve written to you from a more personal place than usual. My intention in writing these pieces of my story is to share my humanity with you. As human beings, we all go through trials and tribulations. We all have hardships. And we all fall down but rise to stand tall another day. The last twenty or so months have been challenging as a society and the world has certainly not been hardship-free, even before COVID entered our worlds.
Mitigating Damage from Outside Noise
This week I’d like to write about the noise of the world, including the noise that has surrounded me, and how to differentiate noise from the truth. When I say the noise of the world I’m referring to Brene Brown and her reference to the warrior’s ring featuring Theodore Roosevelt’s speech.
Remember that Brene teaches us that the noise from the stands (the outside world) says nothing about our worth and that worth is inside each warrior dusting the blood from their knees to fight another day. In my observations over these past 20 months, and speaking honestly since our last administration took office, the noise from the stands seems to have increased in volume. At times the roar of the crowd can be deafening.
As someone living with PTSD, noise in and of itself can be challenging for me. When that noise is coming from others, it may not hurt my ears but can hurt my heart. Do you all remember this little ditty as a child; “Stick and stones may break your bones but words will never hurt me”? Yeah, me too. It’s a bullshit ditty if that’s a thing.
What the ditty should go like is “sticks and stones may break your bones but words can break your heart.” We as humans are not immune from the painful words of others and those words can make us question our own worth. It’s painful to realize that when others say unkind words (and worse) that there is a subset of people who choose to behave this way intentionally. These are the people making noise in the stands.
The Worst Part of the Crowd
The intentionally hurtful people in the stands seem to believe that by pointing out the imperfections of others that they are somehow pointing out their own perfection. That is to say that if they can be loud enough about how their belief system, sexual identity, race, gender, and the like is perfect that maybe, just maybe, it means their own, differing lifestyle is better than yours.
This may have made sense tens of thousands of years ago; classifying each other by how they looked and behaved. This allowed our ancient ancestors to know who was in their tribe and who was an actual threat. Yet as language and thought developed, currency also developed, and all of a sudden these cheap shot demographics became a sorting of worth. You need not look further than slavery and the treatment of women or look into the holocaust as societal examples for the danger of this type of behavior.
At a societal level, in a power-over dynamic, fear is necessary to keep the power in place. Teaching people to fear other people is very simple to do: just sprinkle in judgment, divide a few resources you say are scarce, add a God of your choosing, and tada! you have power. This is also bullshit, yet remains very real for a lot of people today.
Power & Control
Personally, I’ve always hated power-over dynamics used for power and control. Using resources to restrict others fires up my soul up like nothing else. Using both covert and overt differences as the fuel to feed this power is the match before the gasoline that starts the fire. For those of us who refuse to use a power-over approach and believe in our bones that humanity is equal, deserving a life with choice, a life with resources to live day-to-day encounters can be maddening.
Also, personally, even as a woman I have never felt this attempted power-over as closely as I have this past year. I have been told hideous things from my father’s family regarding women and their “God.” I have heard messaging from almost every person in the legal system to not fly my “feminist flag,” in our country courthouse. I have even faced the local football team head-on about racism in regards to my son.
The words I have heard from others in the stands this past year have been ugly, to put it mildly. It took me almost a full year to realize the noise from the stands was not real but my worth is. I have stood in the ring, dusting blood from my knees, and forcing myself to face the hate but not using it to fight. Hate begets hate.
Stop Listening to the Noise
Here in the US, we’ve been struggling for over a year, but it’s been a lifetime for so many others. My son surely did not have his first encounter with racism on his freshman football team. I’ve been questioned as a woman countless times even before this past year began. And people in “power,” have been using others for personal gain at any cost (including human lives) for centuries. Yet outside of this power-over dynamic is a power within with a different dynamic. A power that demands that all humanity is treated equally and deserving of respect. A power that tells us that no matter how loud hate is, love can overcome it.
So which will you choose? Will you choose to continue to section off pieces of humanity based on what they believe, how they look, or if you feel you can gain control over them? I certainly hope not. I also certainly hope that if you are choosing not to use power-over, you are using power with and standing up for your worth, as well as the worth of others.
We are brothers and sisters. We are more alike than we are different. If you ever find yourself in the stands, adding your anger to that of the crowd, know that you can stop, walk to the ring, and help your sister stand.
Xoxo,
Jessie
by IABA Team | Sep 27, 2021
The likelihood that a person with autism has another condition correlates strongly with the age at which they received their autism diagnosis, according to a new study. The study also noted that girls with autism are more likely than neurotypical girls to have other conditions, to a degree not seen in boys.
Study factors included whether a person with autism’s age at ASD diagnosis or birth sex changed their chance of having any of 11 common comorbid conditions (including epilepsy, anxiety, and ADHD). The study drew on data from around 16,000 people with autism and more than 650,000 neurotypical people up to 16 years old.
Among people included in the study who received late ASD diagnoses (11 to 15 years old) 26% of girls and 13% of boys were also diagnosed with a comorbid condition. The trend for intellectual disability in the study was the opposite with 40% of people with an early autism diagnosis having an intellectual disability, compared to just 10% percent of people with a late autism diagnosis.
Looking at Gender and ASD Comorbidities
For 11 co-occurring conditions considered by study researchers, the age of autism diagnosis was the single biggest predictor of whether a participant had that condition. Gender was another major factor.
Among individuals with autism, girls were 2.2X more likely to have anxiety than boys. By contrast, anxiety is about 1.4X higher in neurotypical girls than neurotypical boys. And while neurotypical boys are 2.6X more likely to have ADHD than neurotypical girls, the ratio dropped within the ASD population. Boys with Autism are just 1.6X more likely than girls with autism to have ADHD.
Looking at the ASD Spectrum Index
86 percent. That is the proportion of people with autism who show “a fair to very good level of objective psychosocial functioning,” according to a study that tracked the jobs. The happiness and close friendships of 917 adults — 425 men and 492 women — were tracked over a six-year period. These study results appeared in the journal Autism in June 2021.
The results of recent studies have started taking closer looks at both the age of ASD diagnoses and the gender of people with ASD. The early data shows promising results in the differences between boys and girls with ASD.
ABA Therapy from IABA Consultants
If you have questions regarding autism treatment, education, or plans using ABA therapy, we are here for you! Our goal is to make sure no family is turned away due to financial constraints. Our therapy team would love to talk to you. Find the location closest to you and give us a call. We’re here for you.
Sources
Spectrumnews.org, Community Letter
Journal of Autism & Developmental Disorders, July 2021
Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, July 2021
Health Services Research, July 2021
by IABA Team | Sep 20, 2021
People with autism aged 16 and younger and 40 to 60 have higher odds of being infected with COVID-19 than their neurotypical peers do, according to new studies. Researchers analyzed data from 16,406 people with autism in Israel’s largest healthcare organization. The team matched participants with a neurotypical person of the same age and gender.
The results show people with autism aged 16 and younger were 1.3X more likely to be infected with COVID-19. Participants with autism in the 40 to 60 age range had double the odds, the study noted. All results from this study appeared in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders in July 2021.
“These findings suggest that people with autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders should be prioritized for vaccines,” said the lead medical researcher. “There is awareness towards the increased risk of morbidity among people with neurodevelopmental disorders, but I can’t really connect the link and say, ‘OK, they’ve taken our findings and turned it into a policy.’”
Research has just begun, which is why it’s uncertain why certain people with autism have elevated odds of contracting COVID-19. Researchers noted the differences seen in participants aged 40 to 60 could be associated with familial interactions, but there isn’t enough evidence yet.
ASD & COVID-19 Research Studies in the US
The number of autism-specific Medicaid waivers went up nearly 500% from 2004 to 2015, according to a new study. Many states use Medicaid waivers to provide services to people who may not be covered for ASD Services under Medicaid.
US researchers compiled a list of 269 different Medicaid programs focused on providing services to people with autism or intellectual disability. During this 11-year study, 26 states changed their Medicaid waivers to increase care options for people with autism. Nine states added a type of waiver called (waiver 1915C) specifically for people with autism, far outpacing new waivers for other types of intellectual disability.
“There’s a big difference in how states use Medicaid to meet the needs of people with autism throughout their life,” says Lindsay Shea, associate professor and director of the Policy and Analytics Center at the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute at Drexel University in Philadelphia.
ASD State Benefits
Three states researched in the study— Arizona, Rhode Island, and Vermont — do not offer any 1915C waivers, which was the main type of Medicaid program assessed in the study, thus they were not included in the study data. Arizona, Rhode Island, and Vermont use a different waiver, called a 1115, to provide long-term patient care.
Researchers also used data from autism prevalence studies to estimate the percentage of people with autism in each state who could potentially be served using 1915C waivers. The study estimated that Wisconsin could serve more than 20 percent of people with autism or intellectual disability through Waiver 1915C, while Minnesota could serve about 14 percent. For most states, the figure was far lower. The average state could serve an average of 4 percent of intellectually disabled residents or people with autism through Medicaid waivers.
ABA Therapy from IABA Consultants
If you have questions regarding autism treatment, education, or plans using ABA therapy, we are here for you! Our goal is to make sure no family is turned away due to financial constraints. Our therapy team would love to talk to you. Find the location closest to you and give us a call. We’re here for you.
Sources
Spectrumnews.org, Community Letter
Health Services Research, July 2021
