Services

ABA Therapy Services

At family Focused ABA, your child will receive 1:1 therapy with a Registered Behavior Technician. A Board Certified Behavior Analyst will oversee your child’s case and provide direction for 10% of hours they spend in 1:1 therapy. The number of hours your child receives is determined by several factors such as level of severity, age and maladaptive behaviors present. Parents remain highly involved and collaborative throughout the process to ensure ABA techniques are used across environments.

Building Skills Through Play and Support

Play Based

Kids learn through play so its our job to make play fun, engaging and align with your child’s interests. We utilize play to work on social skills, communication, cause and effect and so much more.

Natural Environment Teaching
This type of teaching involves utilizing naturally occurring opportunities to teach and help learners generalize skills. The clinician remains highly attentive to the learner’s cues and preferences to support skill acquisition.

Positive Reinforcement
A core principal of ABA is rewarding the behaviors you want to see increase. The more the learner accesses something they prefer following a particular behavior, the more likely they will be to engage in the behavior again.

Chaining
This technique involves breaking a larger more complex task (such as brushing teeth or playing a board game) down into smaller achievable steps. Once the learner gradually masters each step, they will be able to complete the full complex task.

Prompting
Prompts are cues or assistance that help the learner achieve the correct response in order to gain new skills and understanding. We identify and utilize the type of prompt the learner will be most successful with then gradually fade prompts away to support independence and mastery of a new skill.

Visual Supports

Many learners on the Autism Spectrum benefit from visual supports by helping them understand the world around them. Examples of visual supports are visual schedules for bedtime routine, a social story discussing the importance of playing nicely with friends or a choice board with options the learner could do.

Generalization
Learners are taught how to use their new skills in various settings and situations to ensure the useful application in their everyday lives.

Reducing Maladaptive Behaviors

Behavior reduction techniques in ABA focus on decreasing maladaptive behaviors and increasing more appropriate ones. These techniques involve identifying the “why” behind the behavior, modifying the environment to support positive change, using reinforcement and teaching replacement behaviors. The key is understanding that behavior serves a purpose (e.g., getting attention, escaping a task) and then using that understanding to guide your response when maladaptive behaviors occur.

The 4 Functions of Behavior

Functional Behavior Assessments aid in determining the “why” behind maladaptive behaviors. Behavior is communication that often serves one or multiple functions: attention, escape, access to tangibles, or sensory stimulation.

Teaching Replacement Behaviors
Teaching Replacement behaviors
Another key aspect of behavior reduction is teaching learners new, more appropriate behaviors to replace the maladaptive behaviors. This can include social skills, communication skills, or self-regulation strategies.

Functional Communication Training (FCT)

Many learners with Autism have difficulty expressing themselves and resort to engaging in maladaptive behaviors to make themselves seen and heard. We focus on teaching learners to communicate their wants and needs in a way that is socially acceptable.

Environmental Modifications
Set yourself and your child up for success by modifying the environment they’re in. Environmental modification strategies help to prevent challenging behaviors from occurring in the first place. Parents learn how to adjust their actions before, during and after maladaptive behaviors occur in order to decrease the likelihood that those behaviors will happen again.

Differential Reinforcement
This involves reinforcing desired behaviors while ignoring or minimizing reinforcement of maladaptive behaviors. The amount or magnitude of a reinforcer should match the behavior of the learner.

Continuous Monitoring and Adjustments:

We continuously collect data on behaviors to track progress and make adjustments to the behavior intervention plan as needed. Kids are always growing and learning, therefore, the behavior intervention that worked when they were younger may no longer be effective. In this case, a new functional analysis will be conducted to determine the plan moving forward.