What Is a Bcba? Why a Bcba? When Would You Need a Bcba?

More common terms for a BCBA is behaviour specialist, behaviour consultant or positive behaviour support specialists. BCBA stands for Board Certified Behaviour Analyst. 

When seeking a behaviour support, it is recommended to seek a professional who has a BCBA, the reason for this is that we are held accountable to the Professional and Ethical Compliance Code from the BACB and every two years recertify. To recertify we complete continuing professional development courses in our field. As well as this, choosing a BCBA will allow you to know the standard and training experience underwent by the professional.

For toddler tantrums a BCBA can support your child and you through behaviour change. Our approach is effective as it is evidence-based, and we seek to understand why the behaviour is happening. This means that the strategies are specific to your child and not random super nanny strategies. Rather than relying heavily on a “naughty step”, or “bold step”, we advise on easy to implement and practical strategies in the home. These strategies focus on setting your child up, rather than punishing after the behaviour.

For older children with behaviour that is negatively impacting their learning or interaction with their peers and social groups, the same approach is applied. We collaborate with your child and you to understand why the behaviour is happening and then put the supports in place to reduce the behaviour.

For early intervention and those younger kids who are partially or fully accessing the home tuition grant, a BCBA can guide and support you, your child and tutor through their learning. To do this, an initial assessment that would involve both meeting you and your child would be carried out. Here, priority skills would be identified to teach. The programme would be closely monitored and reviewed through data collection to ensure that learning is occurring. This means that if your child is finding a skill tricky to learn, then we would change how we are teaching it- This sounds like common sense, right? However often programmes are let run for extended periods of time without any change.

For more information check out our services tab or contact info@stepbystepconsulting.ie.