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Parent Support can Provide Needed Intervention While Learners Await ABA Therapy
On average, individuals with autism spend approximately 5.5 months on waitlists for behavioral health services, leaving parents and caregivers scrambling to support their child without formal therapy. One in 36 children has been identified with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), yet there are less than 60,000 board certified behavior analysts (BCBAs) in the US available to provide critical applied behavioral analysis (ABA) therapy to this population—with significant disparities in rural and underserved communities. With these gaps in care, the burden is falling on caregivers and parents to provide interim support while they wait to get off waitlists, but it’s clear that caregivers need concrete guidance and specific tools to be an impactful stand-in for in-clinic care in the meantime.
Early intervention is critical for individuals with autism and related intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DDs), and it has the potential to improve outcomes for these learners significantly. Early intervention has been linked to stronger language skills, improved motor function, and in some cases, starting integrated developmental and behavioral intervention soon after diagnosis can result in the learner progressing off of the autism spectrum. Furthermore, to bolster early intervention practices, data suggest that getting parents engaged at the earliest possible point in the therapeutic process is critical.
The impact of early intervention and parent/caregiver support is clear, yet with long wait times for ABA services, sometimes early intervention feels impossible. However, there is potential to use these windows before learners receive formal ABA therapy to give parents and caregivers the resources they need to provide critical support in the early days of diagnosis.
Equipping Parents to Deploy ABA Tactics in the Meantime
A central question remains as we think about utilizing parents and caregivers as a stop-gap before engaging in formal ABA therapy: If there are barely enough BCBAs to support actual learners, how can we properly equip parents?
In recent years, we have begun to see more innovations intended to support the deployment of ABA therapy such as video modeling or virtual reality (VR) therapy. There is a clear opportunity to utilize these same technologies to support caregivers and parents, as well.
Tools like video modeling, VR, and more traditional online guidelines for advocacy can all help caregivers ease into learning how to deploy ABA therapy at home to increase positive outcomes for those diagnosed with autism while they wait to receive formal resources. The discourse around parenting individuals with autism and related intellectual and developmental disabilities has long focused on behavior reduction instead of skill acquisition. But to practice early intervention while awaiting services, parents need to have resources to teach their children skills that help establish independence and ensure their learning is on track.
The Opportunity for Parents
Parents play a vital role in supporting their children’s developmental journey. They often are the first ones to identify signs of autism and are the constant point of contact in both the educational and medical settings as their children navigate care. While not a full replacement for ABA therapy, parent training is an excellent stop-gap measure to ensure that individuals with autism and related IDDs have the tools they need to manage through wait times.
Rick Kubina, BCBA-D, is director of research at CentralReach.
The views expressed in Perspectives are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Behavioral Healthcare Executive, the Psychiatry & Behavioral Health Learning Network, or other Network authors. Perspectives entries are not medical advice.
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