The last habilitation therapist to work in our home was a lovely young woman. I really liked her. She had never worked with the developmentally disabled. Had no educational training, no knowledge of the therapy types or techniques. I trained her myself on Tony’s programs…personally I care more about someone’s ability to be patient and their willingness to truly listen to what the needs of my son are than what kind of experience they have. She ended up deciding after a couple of months that hab wasn’t her journey and quit all of her clients. Sometimes you just don’t know if something is for you until you try it, and I respect that. Often turnover his high in general for hab therapists.
In the state of Arizona, all a person needs to do habilitation therapy is to be above 18, have a CPR/First Aid card, pass an Article 9 class (which loosely goes over what DDD paid therapists are and aren’t allowed to do), and have a level 1 fingerprint clearance card. Only children in the early intensive intervention stage of hab have a BCBA as a clinical supervisor. This stage generally ends at age 5 in Arizona unless an extension is granted- Tony was granted an extension until he was 6, at which point he entered into regular hab therapy and we needed to use the ABA coverage under his behavioral health benefits, which became a separate service then and required an RBT being supervised by the BCBA for that. There isn’t a BCBA / clinical supervisor overseeing habilitation therapy for children of Tony’s age, and there isn’t additional therapy training of any kind that is required for the therapists working with kiddos in his age group either.
Some of you may be remembering at this point that we recently had a formal statement given to the AHCCCS administration by our former ABA team that because of the success I have had in moving Tony’s progress forward in his community goals as his acting hab therapist that only hab therapy is necessary to meet his needs going forward.
Because we had transferred work of Tony’s community safety goals a couple of years ago into his ABA therapies, to promote consistency I followed their recommendations up until they chose to work on different goals during ABA this past April and I started using different programming for community safety in hab starting in May. If you have been reading with us for a while or you know a bit more about what my day to day life has been like, you doubtless understand that our family has desperately needed the results we have since obtained. I have worked hard. Tony has worked hard. I have been grateful for what we have accomplished.
But, as we’ve mentioned previously, I’ve been getting a hands on education in a lot of different therapy types for the past 9 years now…because that’s how long we’ve been doing therapy with our son. And, I’ve read a whole lot of stuff on different therapy types and techniques. And, I have been using strictly ABA with Tony as if I were a BCBA writing and overseeing the programs the way I would want to see them be run since May.
I’m not a BCBA, I’m a mom trying to do the best I can in a situation that often feels more like drowning than living.
In my opinion, no matter how much I like someone, there is literally no way a person who has no experience with the developmentally disabled nor any training in therapy methods can come in and work with Tony without some rather extensive guidance and produce the kind of outcome I did from May to now.
As his mom, it is my job to always advocate for what is in his best interest. Because he still meets medical necessity for ABA, we’re doing what we can to find a new team for that, but wait lists for that type of service are generally long on our end of town…so he’ll likely be without that type of service for a while. Lucky for our son and lucky for everyone paying for my work in hab then that I’ve been paying attention and learning from every therapist around me all of these years.
And so, I want to thank each and every therapist we’ve ever worked with for sharing those bits and pieces of what they know and do with me. I couldn’t be doing this without what I have learned from each and every one of you.
