Everything You Need to Know About ABA Treatment Plans
An ABA therapy treatment plan is a strategy for treatment that Board-Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs) develop, including our goals and targets for each client. Each treatment plan is individualized to each client, and no treatment plan will be the same.
BCBAs conduct two assessments: the parent interview and the child observation. During the parent interview, we can get an idea about what parents want to increase or what our behavior reduction goals are going to be. We can also get an idea how the parents respond to those behaviors, what they have tried, and it tells possible future parent training goals. During the child observation part of the assessment, we use different assessments such as ABLLS-R, VBMAPP, SSIS, etc. This shows us the different deficits that we need to address, and if there are splintered skills we must note.
Who Develops An ABA Treatment Plan?
BCBAs or BCaBAs usually write treatment plans. In some cases, an Associate Clinician or a Senior Therapist could assist in writing the treatment plans with the supervision of a BCBA, especially if they assisted in the intake assessment process. What’s great about ABA is that it is so individualized, and focuses uniquely on the client. I believe that Trumpet highlights this by ensuring each treatment plan individually addresses each client’s needs. All kids are different, and all assessments are different; hence, why it’s important to create individualized Treatment Plans because we want to emphasize on strengths and identify each of the areas we need to focus on with each client. This will also give us an idea of how many hours to recommend to each client.
What Is the Goal of ABA Therapy Treatment Plan?
In terms of treatment plans, Trumpet gives a lot of liberty to the BCBA on ensuring that all our goals cater to our clients. There is no specific way to write a treatment plan in terms of goals, which means that the goals that the BCBAs put in are specific to the client. Trumpet also includes a section for coordination of care with other providers which ensures collaboration across all members providing the care of each child. What I also like about Trumpet’s treatment plans is that we include the behavior intervention plan (BIP) of the client within the treatment plan and all the procedures we are going to use, and we discuss it with caregivers and get their signature/acknowledgement before we implement any behavior reduction procedures.
What Does An ABA Therapy Treatment Plan Include?
Each treatment plan includes information such as:
- Background information
- Coordination of care
- Assessment results
- Antecedent, Behavior, Consequence (ABC) data orFunctional Analysis (FA) results
- Behavior reduction goals and Behavior Intervention Plan
- Progress for that specific authorization period (6 months or a year- depending on the insurance)
- Parent training goals
- Approved reinforcers
- A titration plan
The titration plan is important for us to set criteria on when a client is ready for graduation. Our goal is for the caregivers to be able to implement our strategies to ensure maintenance and generalization of the skills across all environments.