confused about which ABA provider to use | Autism PDD

The upheaval for your duaghter of moving to another home for a few days each week would prob canxl out the advantage of having a more experienced provider. I'd stay home and use the local option. That's without considering the $'s.

Wow-It sounds like you are willing to make a great sacrifice by getting an apartment in the provider's area.

I think you should definitely interview provider B and her company. Find out how much supervision is really involved and in what capacity. Who will write the programs, the director or the trainee? If there are problems, does the director assist? If the program is set up will they provide training to another therapist that you could hire on the side to add additional hours? Our BCBA oversees the program, the tutors are of all different levels of education and experience. You could ask for references as well.

Look at who is programming your ABA. What type of ABA. I personally like
VB/ABA. While, you may not start out with 25 hrs of ABA, I think that 25+
is what you want for yr daughter. Is there any way that you personally can
hire therapist and have them trained by provider A or B in yr home? You
will still have them consult on a ongoing bases. ABA is a major lifestyle
change for many families and ongoing to boot. You may want to look at
what will benefit both yr daughter and yr other children for the long run.
We have a 35+ program for our son and it has made all the difference in the
world. I know I did not answer yr question, just a thought though.

We have been working with ABA provider A for about 6 months now. They are a well-known company and have a staff of various BCBA's, Behavior Specialists and Senior Therapists. They sent a BCBA to our house to consult us and evaluate my daughter and come up with a program. We live too far away for them to do in-home therapy.

Because we aren't seeing any progress with our daughter we decided we would get an apartment in the provider's area and I would take our daughter and the baby to the apartment 3 days out of the week to get services by a professional therapist. My 4 year old and husband would stay at home. We can get up to 5 1/2 hours of ABA therapy three days each week with the possibility of 2 hours on a 4th day, so a total of 18 1/2 hours maximum.

20 minutes after we thougth we had that all figured out I get a phone call from another provider who is working with a lady I know in this area. She's also a BCBA and owns her own company. The lady I know here has a 3 year old with autism and wants to get her ABA certification so under the supervision of provider B she would do ABA therapy with my daughter for about 12 hours each week. This would be at her house, not mine.

The benefits of provider A is that they have trained staff and we already have a reputation with them. We can also get more hours each week with them, but they are more expensive. Not by a huge amount, but these days it seems every dollar counts.

The benefits of provider B is that we could stay at home and our family won't be separated for 3 days out of the week. The downside is my daughter would be getting therapy from a trainee, in a sense. And it would be in her home, not mine.

I was wondering if anyone had any advice on how we can make this decision? Our daughter is most definitely on the severe side of the spectrum and needs a lot of help. It would be nice to be able to stay home but at the same time I want her to get the best care.