Getting Started

3 Easy Steps

STEP 1

Join Our Waitlist

We encourage all families who join our waitlist to join as many waitlists as possible. We recommend families remain on our waitlist even if they begin ABA treatment with another provider. Click here to join our waitlist.

Our waitlist procedure is designed to manage requests ethically and efficiently, ensuring that prioritization is based on clinical need and resource availability while maintaining fairness and transparency. Placement on our waitlist is not determined by the order in which families contact us.

Within a few weeks of joining our waitlist, we will contact you by email or phone to schedule a brief call. During this conversation, we will ask a few questions about your child and your family to determine whether our program is an appropriate fit. This interview helps ensure a strong match as we consider beginning a collaborative, three-year partnership supporting your family.

STEP 2

Assessment Process

Once your name comes up on our list, we will contact you to schedule the Intake process.  Since most of our initial communication is done through email, please be sure to check and monitor your inbox regularly so you don’t miss important updates.

Orientation: During orientation, you will learn more about the ABA treatment we offer at ABC Group. and have the opportunity to learn more about our important procedures and policies, as well as to clarify expectations. It is helpful to know what you can expect from us and what we expect from you as parent-partners in ABA treatment. At this meeting we will also answer any questions you may have for us!

Assessment: Our multi-step assessment process helps us understand what the areas of concern for your child require our focused attention during ABA treatment. It is our job to ameliorate or reduce the symptoms of autism as much as possible during medically-necessary ABA treatment. Throughout this assessment process, we conduct interviews with you as parents/caregivers to gather information about your child. Additionally, we will test your child directly to determine the starting point for treatment, and to help us determine a roadmap for the next 3 years of treatment.  Our assessments help us determine the areas of need and then carefully prioritize and individualize them as targets for daily ABA therapy.

Intake Meeting: At the Intake Meeting, our clinician will review the assessment report or treatment plan with you, and discuss/explain the recommendations/prescription (intensity) for ABA treatment.

STEP 3

Start ABA Treatment at ABC Group

If you agree with the proposed treatment plan, we will then submit a request for approval/authorization from your insurance funder once we have a team ready for your child. Generally speaking, these are weekly schedules we provide for our clients based on the clinical prescription recommended by the BCBA:

  • 8:30-4:30pm Monday-Friday *(generally a full time prescription for non-verbal children or children with severe deficits in communication and who also demonstrate problem behavior and need full time

  • 8:30-1:30pm or 12-5pm Monday-Friday *(generally a part-time prescription for children who may benefit from less intensity such as 25 hours per week)

*We do not provide after school only treatment, as those treatment times are reserved for our clients who begin to transition back to school, and who continue to need lower doses of ABA treatment.

If your child has language/communication deficits and problem behavior, medically-necessary ABA treatment may be more appropriate for a duration of time instead of educational/special education services at school. Once those language and behavioral challenges improve, we come back to the table to discuss a possible transition of hours back to an environment such as school in order to focus on academics.

Ho`omau

HAWAIIAN VALUES

preserve, perpetuate, continue

Wait List Policy

We often have wait lists for services- particularly afternoon services. Please read our formal wait list policy below. If you would like to be put on our wait list, we will call you when an opening is anticipated.

To ensure that we have the most up-to-date information on our clients, we will be placing families on three separate wait lists: 1) parent orientation, 2) assessment, and 3) service. When we can begin ABA therapy for a few children, we will take them off the service wait, and the next group of children from the assessment wait will begin the assessment process and then be placed on the service wait list. The assessment and service wait will have approximately 5 children on each list at a time. The remaining families will be on the wait list for parent orientation until that step is complete.

Intake Assessment

At the intake assessment appointment, an interview will be conducted with the caregivers to obtain detailed information about the referral concerns and your child’s developmental history, medical history, and family history. Please let us know if your family would benefit from translation services. Our Clinical Director will also observe your child during the intake appointment as well as utilize various assessment tools geared for the child to directly assess your child’s skill levels across various domains. The information obtained from the direct observations will aid in diagnosis and treatment decisions.

The results will be analyzed and a treatment plan will be written by the Clinical Director. She will meet with you and your family to discuss this plan, and clinical impressions regarding initial treatment recommendations/options based on the information obtained from the assessment process. The number of hours of ABA therapy sessions your child will be scheduled for is based on a variety of factors including recommendations of medically necessary ABA treatment, the skill deficits of the child, and behavioral barriers to learning.

ABA Treatment at ABC

Ongoing treatment at ABC will be provided by behavior technicians, and behavior analysts. Factors influencing this decision include the nature of the referral concerns, therapist specialties, and scheduling availability. Multiple therapists will work with your child so that skills generalize across settings and people. The treatment phase may be recommended for a duration which may vary from several months to several years.

Treatment Plan

The results of the skills assessment provide the necessary information to generate an individual treatment plan (ITP) for your child that will address the referral concerns. A lead BCBA/BCaBA will be assigned to your child to lead the treatment team. The BCBA/BCaBA will discuss with you the proposed goals and assessment results along the journey. Each child has his/her own program book that contains his/her treatment plan, curriculum skills graphs, data sheets outlining the specific goals targeted for each program in acquisition and other graphs for behavioral interventions of various kinds. Data will be collected and analyzed on an ongoing basis so that your child’s progress can be monitored daily. As your child masters skills, the treatment plan will be updated to reflect your child’s progress. In the event that progress is slower than expected, treatment plans can be updated to reflect revised teaching strategies and new goals.

Parent Involvement

Parent involvement in ABA treatment is highly correlated with successful outcomes. The BCBA/BCaBA will conduct the parent training component in which caregivers will be taught the basics of ABA including teaching new skills, preventing/managing problem behavior, and how to generalize and maintain skills acquired during ABA sessions. We will provide you with FREE access to Relias Learning to access an online video library of modules which we will assign to you to complete, in addition to scheduling face-to-face parent coaching sessions with you and your family. Progress updates will occur during parent training sessions.

Malama

HAWAIIAN VALUES

caring, nurturing others, to protect

ABA Therapy Sessions

Therapy typically occurs in the clinic but will also take place in home, school or community locations as recommended and scheduled. Some sessions will also address problem behaviors and skills assessments. Acquisition skills are identified through a variety of skills assessments including the Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment and Placement Program (VB‐MAPP), an array of developmental curriculum and assessment tools. For school‐aged children, other curriculum are used to assess reading, math and writing fluency. Problem behaviors can also be addressed during skill acquisition sessions on an as needed basis. A typical therapy session in the clinic consists of alternating between table teaching and Natural Environment Teaching (NET); however therapy sessions can vary from child to child based on their individual needs. Table teaching sessions and NET sessions are described in more detail below:

  • Table teaching or ITT most often include: language/communication (i.e., receptively identifying items or pictures, labeling items, answering questions, etc.), matching items, sorting items, academic tasks (i.e., writing, math, reading), motor imitation, and attending skills.
  • Natural Environment Teaching usually consist of incidental teaching and therapist contrived learning opportunities to work on many skills areas including social skills, language/communication skills, play skills, and independent living skills. Incidental teaching is a child‐initiated teaching interaction.

Many of the skills that are initially taught during a table session will also be targeted during NET sessions once they have been mastered, in order to ensure that mastered skills can be performed in a variety of environments and with a variety of people.

For our youngest learners ages 12 months to 36 months of age, we use Natural Environment Teaching (NET) or Incidental Teaching for all learning opportunities. This approach uses naturally occurring situations based on the child’s motivation which become the teachable moments. We also contrive motivation to make it possible for additional teachable moments to occur every hour. Much of these sessions look like we are just playing and having fun, however underneath it all we are using ABA to teach new skills such as requesting/manding and the science of ABA to decrease problem behavior such as crying, or tantrums. Problem behavior will decrease as functional communication/language improves. When we teach functional language, this can be in the form of sign language, vocal language or use of a Speech Generating Device (SGD) such as an iPad to do the talking.

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