Episode Description
Welcome to ABA Unfiltered where our goal is to provide the greater ABA community with insights and education to make the science, policy, and culture behind ABA more digestible and accessible.
In this introduction, you’ll hear from our host Tim Crilly, BCBA, and Keith Jones, CEO of BlueSprig about how BlueSprig aims to bring the ABA community together to collaborate through this podcast and how BlueSprig was founded. Enjoy!
Full transcript
0:05 Tim Crilly:
Hello and welcome to ABA Unfiltered. I’m your host, Tim Crilly. And along with my guests on this podcast, we hope to inform the greater ABA community on the relevant topics ranging from science, policy, charitable endeavors, and culture in the field. In season one, we will be giving you a look into what BlueSprig is about internally, as well as covering a host of different topics. By way of introduction, I am a BCBA who has been in the industry for over 20 years. I fell into autism almost by accident. I was teaching and had a student in my class who was not diagnosed, but for many reasons created a lot of situations where attention needed to be placed on him. And it really opened my eyes to the need, and that led me to jump into the ABA world with a large ABA provider out on the West Coast. I spent 10 years there doing a number of different roles that really broadened my perspective of the industry. At one point, I realized maybe it was time to expand my influence, and I had the opportunity to join a large national healthcare provider, and somehow they let me run their ABA and autism programming. And I really began to learn more and more about the industry, the people, what looks good, what doesn’t. At some point that became a little frustrating because the level of regulation kind of created situations where you couldn’t do the things you wanted to do. You couldn’t change the things you wanted to change. And that led me to BlueSprig. And I met Keith Jones and very early on in this process. We really shared the same vision and values as it relates to what this industry needs and where it should go. And I took the leap and I jumped in with two feet to join BlueSprig very early in the process. And I haven’t regretted it for a single day as we continue to live our mission day in and day out to change the lives for all individuals with autism. And I get to work with a lot of fascinating people in doing so. And I’m really excited about the opportunity to start this journey with you guys, the audience. When I say audience, it’s probably just my mom at this point. But from there, I really hope that we can impart on you some of the great things that we are doing here at BlueSprig. So during our conversations, you know, we obviously hope to inform you, have a little fun, and maybe just maybe convince you that BlueSprig is a place that you maybe want to pick up your career and get involved with some really fascinating people. So with that, I want to hand it off to Keith Jones, our CEO, to introduce you to a little bit more in-depth about why BlueSprig is different and why it’s something that you need to take notice of. Thank you.
2:45 Keith Jones:
Hi, my name is Keith Jones, and I’m the CEO of BlueSprig Pediatrics. I’m really excited to join you for our new ABA Unfiltered podcast series. When I started BlueSprig, one of the really important things for me was to create a company that would expand access for families that are wrestling with the challenges of autism spectrum disorder. You know, over the last two and a half, three years since I started BlueSprig, many people have asked me why did I start this company? Why are we doing what we’re trying to do? It all started for me in my last job. I was the COO of a pediatric nursing company. When I left that company, I knew that I wanted to continue to make a difference in the lives of children. And as I started to look around at pediatric-focused opportunities, I started to look at the autism landscape. And what I saw was a very fragmented industry, very large number of small providers, a few large providers, with a wide variation of quality, a wide variation of approaches, and a great deal of infighting about how things should be done. At the same time, increasing funding coming from commercial and Medicaid sources who were asking questions of the industry, such as, how do we know that what you do has an impact? And I knew that if we were going to create true access to care for families with autism, regardless of their means to pay, we must create a scale provider that could truly make a difference and that could truly articulate the value that it was creating, the impact that it was having on these children and for these children. And so I started BlueSprig to change the world for children with autism, and that is our mission. You will find that mission on the walls in every clinic, along with our values. There is nothing more important to our organization and to me personally than changing the world for children with autism. There are three pillars that are required if you’re going to change the world for children with autism. You must provide the very best quality in ABA services, and we believe that we provide the highest quality of ABA services in the industry. In order to do that, the second pillar, you need great research. We invest millions of dollars in research every year to advance that quality that we’re providing and to advance the field in general. We publish research, we are developing technology to be able to report on our outcomes and to look at the data that exists across the 2,500 children that we provide services to each and every day to be able to look at our own data to really drive and move the needle on quality in this industry. And frankly, that’s what, to me, this ABA Unfiltered podcast is largely about. It’s about bringing together the best and brightest minds in the field, some of whom are in BlueSprig, many of whom are not, but bringing them together to collaborate in advancing ABA practice. And so I hope that you enjoy that aspect of these podcasts. The third pillar is advocacy. We, as I said earlier, are going to be unapologetic about our role in this industry. We are going to be loud advocates for change and for inclusion. And we invest significant dollars and significant time and significant resources, frankly, sometimes states that we don’t even exist in, talking to the legislature, talking to regulatory bodies, and ensuring that they are meeting their obligation to provide access to care for families and children that need it. But we’re also working outside of our clinics and working outside of our direct services to advocate for inclusion and awareness in schools and to ensure schools are held accountable to their obligation for these children. So I’ll wrap up by saying this. Or if you’re a parent of a child with autism and this podcast helps you ask the right questions, then I think we’ve succeeded. Thank you for listening to ABA Unfiltered. I hope you enjoy.