Association for Behavior Analysis International

2020 has changed the way people live across the globe. The rapid spike in COVID-19 cases started to spread panic around the world. The effects cost the lives of people and spurred a major economic crisis. The unknown nature of the pandemic resulted in global stress. Lockdowns seemed the only way to keep people safe and forced families to face new challenges of working from home with the added responsibility of educating their children. For families with special needs, this proved even more challenging. The research is robust in the medical necessity of ABA therapy for individuals with Autism and other Developmental Disabilities. Therefore, Behavior Analysts had to quickly adapt to find ways to maintain quality ABA services safely. Clinics, families and therapists had to pivot quickly to telehealth, and restructuring their service delivery models to follow new safety protocols from the CDC and local/Federal government mandates. The aim of this panel is to discuss 1) The challenges faced during the lockdown, 2) The struggles Behavior Analysts and families with special needs faced, and 3) Share lessons learned from different parts of the US and Europe on how we successfully navigated through maintaining quality ABA services in a pandemic.

This presentation will require audience to have some knowledge of Telehealth ABA, BACB ethical guidelines, and disseminating quality ABA services to the individuals with special needs.