Becky in a Nutshell: Introducing the BCBA Joining Our Team and How She Developed a Passion for ABA
I’m Becky Nelson, a Board-Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA), and I am thrilled to announce that I am joining the Something to Say ABA team in Springfield. I would like to take a minute to introduce myself and talk about my experience in the field of applied behavior analysis (ABA).
Finding My Calling: Family Roots in Child Welfare
Throughout childhood and all of the way through my undergraduate graduation, I changed career ideas about as often as I changed my clothes. I knew that I wanted to be in a field that changed lives and that allowed me to be face to face with others; however, whittling down the options honestly seemed overwhelming for a long time.
In the end of my decision-making progress, I saw how much my family influenced my eventual path. Growing up with my father as a police officer and my mother working at DCFS definitely swayed me toward the child welfare field. My mother has always said that she ran out of stories to tell my siblings and I. She told us all of the nursery rhymes, Disney stories, and made up a fair amount of her own, but naturally, we still wanted more. She resorted to telling us stories about situations that she received calls about for her job. We got really good at telling what constituted abuse and neglect in the state of Illinois.
Finding What Works When Standard ABA Falls Short: Tapping Into ACT and Relational Frame Theory
Looking into graduate schools for social work, I found myself at another crossroads. I did some job shadowing in the child welfare field but did not love the traditional roles available. In my research and through some luck of the draw, I found a program at SIU – Carbondale that combined child welfare and the study of behavior analysis (which I wasn’t aware of at the time), and I gave it a chance. I thank my lucky stars everyday for pushing me into something so outside what I was expecting. My graduate assistantship at Project 12-Ways jump started my journey to becoming the BCBA I am today.
Graduate school was an incredible experience where I got to fully feel like I was part of the ABA field. I worked half of the time doing trainings with parents with children in the child welfare system. I attended home visits and gave suggestions to parents based on data. I was able to provide them with direction on different parenting related skills that people don’t always get when they have a child. The other half of the time, I was working at a clinic directly with children. During this time, I was introduced to Relation Frame Theory (RFT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which was definitely a game changer for my clinical practice. RFT is a behavior analytic theory on humans develop language and why language can lead to additional suffering, and ACT is using the science of language to encourage a person to accept difficult thoughts and emotions to live a more value driven life. After learning the basics of behavior and different strategies, I still felt like there had to be more to the human experience. RFT and ACT answered a lot of the questions and getting to run a program focused on ACT was a very helpful tool in my toolbelt when I eventually started at a clinic.
The Hanley Breakthrough: Replacing Crisis Behaviors with Safety, Skills, and Trust
I left graduate school in May 2020, when the world was falling apart from COVID-19 and decided to move back closer to my family. I began work at a local clinic as a BCBA and developed my clinical skills further by learning new assessments, trialing different types of programming, and teaching fieldwork students how to make ethically and value-based decisions in their clinical programming. While I’ve had many clients throughout the years, there are a couple of specific clients who changed my entire overview of ABA and being a practitioner.
Starting as a clinician, I had a couple of older clients with some significant skill deficits and/or severe challenging behavior. I loved asking these families about what would make their lives easier and discussing strengths of their children. For many of the parents, I could tell that they were excited to talk to someone who wanted to really help their child and who wasn’t nervous working with their child for a significant portion of the day.
One client in particular was having significant challenges in the clinic and at home. None of the typical protocols or procedures had seemed to help in reducing the behaviors or increasing his skills significantly. He was in danger of being discharged due to a lack of progress. Luckily, my clinic was looking into Skill Based Training by Dr. Gregory Hanley. This process involves consulting with parents and staff and discovering exactly why the behavior was occurring. Using this information, the clinician then develops a procedure to teach a variety of communication and toleration skills systematically.
This protocol was life changing for my client. Through many trials and errors, his behaviors in the clinic decreased to near zero levels toward the end of his time. He was able to tolerate nonpreferred conversations, follow all boundaries set by the BCBA and staff, and even prompted staff to have him complete daily living skills during the session.
Championing Assent-Based, Client-First Care in Springfield, IL
My experience has led me to believe fully in individualizing every portion of treatment, identifying goals that are socially significant and life changing to the family and client, and keeping up with the research in order to find anything new that might be helpful to my clients.
After so much growth at my last clinic, I am excited to be a part of Something to Say ABA from the ground floor. From previously working with Felicia, I know that she strives for the best and most evidence-based practices. She is not afraid to change programs or go up against a system that doesn’t always have the child’s best interest at heart. I be
lieve that this company will be a great addition to the community by bringing assent-based and individualized services that counteract some of the skepticism of ABA practices.
Next Steps: Want to practice compassionate, assent-based ABA alongside clinicians like Becky? Head over to our Careers Page to learn more about the opportunities available
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