BCBAs ultimately have to answer to the executive administration, rather than clinical admin, as a bottom line, and this means that clinical guidelines and ethics are frequently overruled. Current admin have demonstrated a complete lack of respect for BACB ethical practices, requiring staff to work in a way that leaves them with the choice of leaving APL, or risking their clinical licensure if they continue employment there.
Lack of appropriate staffing/planning means students are often left without trained staff familiar with their case, or adequate supervision.
Rather than allowing BCBAs to implement ABA in a way that makes meaningful changes, the admin want a quick easy response, and students are allowed to “opt out” of instruction more than they participate.
Admin insists that a BT watching a session from the back of the classroom while they engange in personal activities on their phone/computer, or via telehealth (during the pandemic), with ZERO interaction with the learner - meets the requirements of an ABA session that can be billed to insurance, in spite of repeated notifications from BCBAs to admin, that simply collecting data does not equate implementing therapy.
The differences that could be made in these students lives, if BCBAs were allowed to do their jobs right, would be amazing. The day to day environment at APL is survival mode and reactionary. The very real daily safety risk to kids who elope from the building into busy downtown streets, and lack of progress made here is tragic.
