Before we get started we have a couple of huge announcements on our end.
In addition to welcoming a brand new baby girl this past week, we’re excited to publicly launch our ABA skills database! If you haven’t checked it out, hop over to bxmastery.com.
At a loss for where to start, or go next, with a learner regarding program writing?
Our new platform offers over 2,000 target ideas from 100 different skill areas—and it’ll only keep growing. Each skill area comes with ideas for where to go next, what to target now, as well as prerequisite ideas! Check out the video!
It’s no secret that a great way to improve a learner’s outcome is getting the necessary buy in from stakeholders. I’ve recently posted on caregiver training and how this impacts learner success. Getting buy-in from parents, caregivers, and other professionals can go a long, long way. We know that.
However, one often overlooked stakeholder in this grand process happens to be the professional that spends the most time with the learner—the RBT.
There are a variety of reasons for this omission, and I’m not going to get into all of them, but here are a few: lack of time a BCBA has with a client, high turnover rates of staff, and lack of confidence or ability the BCBA has to teach or coach the RBT. These are all hypotheses and commentaries for another article somewhere down the road.
Today, I want to answer the question as to what a BCBA can do right now to enrich their relationship with their RBT. This enrichment is facilitated by a series of ongoing conversations the BCBA should be having with their RBT at the start or end of almost every consultation.
Having a conversation requires both parties to attend to a particular topic. We can’t always teach or coach an RBT on every program, behavior plan, or ABA concept exceptional proficiency. What we can do, though, is orient them toward a series of clinical and professional areas that maintain a focus on what matters with a learner.
But before we get started, we have to start with ourselves as BCBAs. As always, I start with highlighting a paradigm shift.
So often, the BCBA-RBT relationship can be grown and nurtured by simply recategorizing what an RBT actually is.
It all starts with a little thing called humility and respect. As BCBAs, we have to remember and begin to treat RBTs for what they are: clinicians. Adopting the paradigm that the RBT actually has clinical expertise and knowledge that you don’t is critical to making these conversations (not to mention for you to grow as a clinician yourself). Although our org charts show that they may be subordinate to you, that does not mean that you automatically or inherently possess more more clinical or client specific knowledge than they do in every area.
In fact, I like to look at the BCBA-RBT relationship as a venn diagram. There are clinical skills that the BCBA possesses that the RBT does not have. There are also clinical skills that both the BCBA and RBT have. Finally—and most importantly—there is a clinical skill repertoire that only the RBT possesses. That’s right. There are things they know that you don’t.
To enrich a relationship with your RBT and improve learner outcomes you must collaborate with them in such a way that suggests they have important clinical knowledge that you don’t. Doing so in this fashion also suggests that you’re humble enough to know that you don’t know it all. Further—and here’s the game changer—it shows that you respect them for what they know and that you expect them to know things. It’s the same thing you do (or at least should be doing) with other professionals that work with your clients. Respect and humility are the name of the game.
I’m not suggesting that we change their job description. I’m not the BACB nor am I offering opinions on a heavy topic such as this one. It’s important to remember that BCBAs still make the call when it comes to clinical decision making. However, if our intention is to grow RBTs that are of value in their ability to increase learner progress, we cannot view the RBT position in a way that cheapens it. RBTs are not simply warm bodies who are supposed to be running our programs. Instead, they’re junior clinicians with precious behavior analytic thought and insight. If we want to improve RBT behavior, it starts with dealing with our own biases and expectations for the role.
Great, Martin, new paradigm adopted! Now, I need some practical advice for growing my RBTs into awesome “junior clinicians”. What if they are no where close? What do I do?
More on that next week. Hint: It starts with getting them to attend to the right things. Stay tuned!