Association for Behavior Analysis International

Behavior analysts work in diverse settings including clinics, centers, schools, hospitals, and other large, community-based "systems". Behavior analysts also work with a diverse population of clients (e.g., those with developmental disabilities, mental health disorders, comorbid diagnoses) and employees (e.g., direct care staff, nurses, doctors, teachers, behavior technicians, behavior analysts, administrators). Providing high-quality orientation, onboarding, and training experiences to employees with diverse experience and education requires significant development, implementation, and evaluation of these "staff training" systems to ensure the best outcomes for clients and their staff. Using a behavioral systems approach, each of the authors in this symposium will describe the orientation, onboarding, and/or training systems within their large systems while discussing the evaluation required to further inform system development.

Behavior Analysts, Supervisors, Administrators

Functional Behavior Assessment is an evidence-based practice used within high-quality ABA therapy programs to assess and help treat challenging behaviors exhibited by individuals. The specific pinpoints associated with performing these skills require training and supervision of clinicians, especially in large agencies providing geographically diverse applied behavior analysis services. Several effective staff training formats exist including behavioral skills training, video modeling, and performance feedback. The efficiency with which large agencies (and even educational institutions with geographically diverse learners) provide effective staff training opportunities is of great importance to our field and the clients we serve. Using a group experimental design, the current study will explore the effectiveness of various staff training formats on the functional behavior assessment skills of clinicians who provide ABA therapy to individuals with ASD. Results will include changes in observed performance of FBA skills across indirect assessments, descriptive assessments, functional analyses, data summarization and analysis, and reporting. Clinician feedback on preference for training formats and client data will also be discussed.

While much of the early research in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) focused on individuals with mental health disorders and individuals with developmental disabilities, more recent history in ABA with individuals with developmental disabilities has flourished while its active role with those with mental health diagnoses has diminished. Additionally, there is a proliferation of comorbid diagnosis of mental health conditions for individuals with developmental disabilities such as ASD. There is also a focus on utilizing psychotropic medication as either a primary or supplementary treatment component for behavioral excesses. The current paper describes an in-service staff training model aimed at orienting psychiatric nursing and support staff to the field of Applied Behavior Analysis, and how ABA can be an integral part of a multidisciplinary approach to assessment and treatment in an acute in-patient psychiatric unit for children and adolescents. Melding a psychiatric nursing model aimed at both acute behavioral stabilization and medication assessment and management with a functional behavioral approach and the resulting barriers to integration will be discussed.