Services
We provide behavior intervention services to individuals with a wide range of skill levels between the ages of 18 months and 22 years old.
These services can be provided in home, school, and other community settings.
Service Formats
Assessments
Curriculum
Service Formats
Comprehensive Services
- Due to the pervasiveness of ASD, a comprehensive, high-intensity approach to intervention is important, if appropriate for the individual, as all areas of deficit must be intensively targeted to ensure the best outcome across all developmental domains.
- An intervention plan that is labeled as comprehensive in intensity describes a program that generally entails 30 or more hours per week of direct ABA intervention services.
- In order to provide this intensity of intervention, it requires the provision of the program supervisor/consultant, senior behavior technicians, and behavior technicians.
- In this model, the program supervisor/consultant will develop and maintain an individualized treatment plan to target skill acquisition for any deficits and reduction for any excesses (such as challenging behavior). This plan is then implemented during frequent intervention sessions, during which the interventionist will actively create a high frequency of learning opportunities for the child across the targeted goal areas.
Focused Services
- Focused ABA intervention entails low-intensity treatment provided for a limited number of targeted skill areas.
- In this model, the program supervisor/consultant will develop and maintain an individualized treatment plan to target the primary areas of need for the individual, whether that is skill acquisition for deficits or reduction for any excesses (such as challenging behavior).
- Focused treatments generally range from 10-25 hours per week of services and can be necessary for a variety of reasons.
- These services at JBA primarily consist of consultative services to ensure that all individuals in the client’s life are able to maintain a high level of quality teaching interactions, caregiver training services so that caregivers may continue to most effectively support the child outside of more intensive learning environments, or direct intervention for children whose needs do not require or allow for a high-intensity program.
Assessments
Functional Behavior Assessments and Functional Analyses
- If a client being referred for services demonstrates severe challenging behaviors, a functional behavior assessment (FBA) is conducted to determine the function and maintaining variables of the challenging behaviors, as well as to determine the appropriate positive behavior support plan. This allows for program development to teach alternate, functionally-equivalent or related replacement skills. This assessment will entail indirect measures of assessment (e.g., interviews, surveys, record reviews, etc.), as well as direct observation of the client across environments to determine the likely maintaining variable(s) of the challenging behaviors.
- Occasionally, in severe cases or when an FBA is not sufficient for determining maintaining variables, a functional analysis (FA) may be conducted. An FA is a more intrusive analysis that requires the supervisor to alter their responding to the client’s challenging behavior to ascertain the maintaining variables.
Skills Assessments
If a client being referred to JBA does not demonstrate severe challenging behavior, this assessment is conducted to determine the client’s current skill level across developmental domains.
This is then used to identify goals to be targeted for skill acquisition in the client’s treatment plan. This assessment will also entail indirect measures of assessment as well as direct observation.
Curriculum
We strive to ensure our curriculum is comprehensive, individualized, and collaborative to provide services that allow for the best outcome for all of our clients.
Comprehensive
As many individuals with ASD have impairments across multiple skill areas and demonstrate significant lack of generalization abilities, it is necessary to teach skills across all developmental domains (e.g., communication, language, social skills, play and leisure, motor skills, self-help, etc.) to allow for balanced gains and to program proactively for generalization of skills.
Examples by domain (this is not an exhaustive list)
- Communication and language: Teaching the client to ask for their wants and needs or relay information to others, including conversation skills.
- Learning to learn skills: Teaching attending and engagement, imitation skills, matching skills, and instruction following.
- Social skills: Teaching cooperative play, personal space, and social reciprocity.
- Play and leisure: Teaching independent play and expanding on restricted play activities.
- Motor skills: Teaching gross, fine, and oral motor skills.
- Self-help: Teaching dressing skills, appropriate hygiene, toilet training, and expanding food preferences.
- Challenging behavior: Teaching replacement skills, such as to ask for a break instead of engaging in aggression to escape a task.
Individualized
- There are many established procedures derived from ABA that have been shown to be effective. We use a combination of different formats to tailor each program specifically to the client. This allows for individualization to maximize learning.
- Additionally, all targeted goals are established based on the individual client’s needs, as determined through frequent skill assessment and observation. Progress is also continuously monitored and programs are modified as needed to ensure maximum learning is taking place.
Collaborative
- It is important to get a complete picture of each client’s abilities when developing a treatment program. Thus, other individuals who know the client (e.g., parents, caregivers, teachers, other service providers, etc.) have valuable input as to what skills are necessary for the client to learn to allow him or her to better access the resources in his or her environment.
- We take collaboration with these other individuals very seriously and constantly strive to ensure that open and clear communication occurs frequently.
- We especially try to be considerate of parents’ input and the role they play in intervention.
