Association for Behavior Analysis International

This paper presentation will review this year’s progress made in one state agency across several projects of interest. A disproportionately small number of consumers engage in target behaviors that have the greatest intensity and resultant consequences such as admission to Crisis Stabilization Units (CSUs), emergency room visits, and incarceration. The Agency for Persons with Disabilities (APD) is a government agency who is tasked with funding and overseeing behavioral and medical supports for these high watch consumers. By creating a High Watch List of qualifying aberrant behaviors and/or acute medical episodes, APD can provide additional resources for these individuals in the form of more frequent oversight and technical assistance on individualized recommendations. In this way, a larger allocation of time and resources can be more focused to effect long term outcomes. Additionally, proactive recommendations to prevent future episodes can result in more stabilized living settings, consistent service delivery, and potential higher indices of satisfaction of services received by consumers. The results of this project has the potential for applicable state agencies to develop similar processes to serve consumers that have a disproportionately higher level of impactful behaviors that addressed successfully, can improve the quality-of-service provision while lowering long term costs.

The target audience should include Behavior Analysts within their first 5 years of practice, including practitioners, supervisors and/or who are currently enrolled in/recently completed graduate-level work.