Newsletter
Volume 28 | 2005 | Number 2
Applied Behavior Consultants
Opens ABA Schools for Children with Autism in China
Joseph Morrow, Ph.D., BCBA, President, Applied Behavior Consultants, Inc.
Applied Behavior Consultants (ABC) is an 18 year old applied behavior analysis firm, informed by radical behaviorism, employing about 300 people in California. The firm was started in 1987 by Brenda Terzich and myself to provide behavioral services to children with special needs. We operate day schools and in-home programs for children with autism as well as providing other behavioral services.
Though we are not the first behavior analysts to have worked in China, the goal of ABC was to establish enterprises in the form of applied behavior analysis schools that would be financially self-sustaining and expanding.
This process began when Maria Malott invited Brenda Terzich, Joyce Tu, and myself to join a self-funded ABA International delegation to tour and present our work in China. We lectured on the behavioral treatment of autism in various parts of China. One of our highlights was when Joyce (whose first language is Mandarin) and Brenda shaped up a vocal mand in a non-vocal child in front of an audience of 200 in a hospital in Manchuria.
Our entire delegation was well received, and the ABC delegates were approached by several Chinese entrepreneurs interested in starting behavioral schools for children with autism. While we had interest in the question of profits, an equally and perhaps more important consideration was quality control. Our first set of negotiations was quite unsuccessful on the latter count. Eventually, after almost two years, we were able to negotiate a memorandum of understanding with a pediatrician who ran a school in Wuhan, which allowed us four visits per year by two persons at a time for a minimum of one week at a time.
During these visits we would train Chinese staff, assess children, build curricula, advance lessons, and remediate on behavioral skills. Return visits involved the same process, while additionally setting up new schools under the same conditions. Presently we have three schools and a fourth to be set up in June 2005. There are two schools in Wuhan in south central China, one school in Goungzhou near Hong Kong, and our next school will be in Fuzhou on the central coast.
While it may be facetiously said we are specializing in autism of the middle class (China does not offer special education monies for autism) the fact is that our schools are in the black even with all our extensive travel expenses. So to other behavioral entrepreneurs we would urge that quality control remain high on your list of priorities. It can be met.