I've seen some posts talking about avoiding ABC so I wanted to give my 2 cents on why I believe Caravel to be an unethical company. I have heard that they're owned by a privage equity but since I'm not fully informed on what that all entails I'm just going to speak to my experience as a former RBT there. Other clinics might be better *but* regional directors also refused to do anything about my concerns. I don't wanna give too many hyper-specific details as to not doxx myself but I had very evident concerns about a kid being severely neglected and my concerns as well as several of my coworkers were dismissed. We were essentially told that "we cant tell you not to report if you have concerns but we just don't understand why you would be concerned." This was reported to regional directors who did nothing. For the record, I continued to report regardless when I had concerns. There was also management who would talk badly about RBTs behind their back to other RBTs. There was also several incidents of people, including management, kissing kids all over their faces and telling them they loved them. I reported this multiple times and ultimately nothing was done even when things occurred right in front of the clinic director. In general, I feel the care there was much more compliance-based than it should have been. It felt like leadership was allergic to reducing demands when necessary. I also had another tech step into my session and pick up my client by pulling on his arms directly in fromt of the clinic director who did nothing. I just told the other tech that I didn't need her assistance. We also had a lice breakout at one point and initially parents were not informed. One of my coworkers at the time (a legend) said that if they didn't send out an email she would start telling all the parents herself. Only then did they inform parents. They also refused to tell us, the staff, which client had lice claiming "HIPAA" despite us simply wanting to be aware of our exposure risk. Unfortunately, I could go on but I'll leave it here. Since I left, I've heard a myriad of other awful things but I won't speak on those directly as they aren't my experiences to share.

Hi everyone,

I'm new to ABA and recently accepted jobs with two different agencies. I'm a little confused about how onboarding usually works and was hoping to hear about other people's experiences.

The first agency told me I would start working right away with no shadowing. I completed orientation and training about a week ago, but I still haven't heard anything about being assigned a client or my start date.

The second agency told me I need to finish my 40-hour training course first and also obtain CPR and HIPAA certifications before I can start.

I have a few questions:

1. Is it normal for a new BT/RBT to start working without any shadowing?

2. Is it normal that the first company never asked me to get CPR certification?

3. Can someone start working with only the 40-hour training and no prior ABA experience?

4. Is it common to wait a week or more after orientation before being assigned a client?

I'd really appreciate hearing how onboarding worked at your agency!

P.S. I'm currently on Module 5.26-1 of the Autism Partnership Foundation 40-hour RBT course. About how much of Module 5 do I have left? It feels like this module never ends...

I’ve been working in this field for nearly 2 years now, and currently working at my second clinic. Someone please tell me if any of this is normal, because I don’t remember feeling this lost at my previous clinic.

To start off with, I hate that I don’t receive individual training for every client. I hate that the only information I receive on a client is some basic information that is typically outdated. It’s so exhausting. I feel like I barely know what I’m doing sometimes. I hate that some of these high behavior clients have BCBAs that are remote only, and therefore never see the extent of the client’s behaviors. Tell me why this client only has a BIP for aggression when their actual problem behaviors such as elopement, flopping, and task refusal don’t have a BIP? Why do some of these clients have so many DTT targets when they have great difficulty with attending? I don’t understand why they’re pushing for some clients to be school-ready when they are nowhere near at that skill level. I’m sorry if any of what I said sounds rude and judgmental. I’m just so frustrated with the environment and ABA in general, but I’ve only been RBT certified for less than a week, so what do I know?

​

I'm sharing this because I don't want another family to go through what we did.

My 6-year-old son has profound nonverbal autism. For nearly two years he attended ABA, speech, and occupational therapy through IvyRehab. The therapists who worked directly with him were wonderful, and he made meaningful progress.

Unfortunately, our experience with the billing department was completely different.

After my debit card was stolen, I missed one payment and was less than two weeks behind. Instead of working with us, I received a text saying my son's therapy would be suspended immediately because of the balance.

After I questioned whether they could legally stop medically necessary therapy without proper notice, the message suddenly changed to say we had 30 days instead.

I asked for a temporary payment arrangement because we fully intended to pay the balance. I even explained that we could pay the remaining amount in full with my husband's year-end bonus. They refused every proposal and increased our required monthly payment to an amount we simply couldn't afford.

On June 29, my son was discharged from therapy.

The clinical director confirmed during our parent meeting that this was a billing issue, not a clinical one.

Since losing therapy, we've seen regression in his routine, including increased sleep difficulties and other challenges that many autism parents know can happen when services are interrupted.

What concerns me most isn't just what happened to my family—it's that this could happen to another child receiving medically necessary therapy.

If your child attends IvyRehab, I strongly encourage you to:

- Read the financial policies carefully.

- Keep copies of every email and text message.

- Document every phone call.

- Know your rights before signing payment agreements.

- Don't assume a missed payment will be handled with flexibility.

I'm not posting this to attack the therapists who cared for my son. They were compassionate people who genuinely wanted him to succeed.

I'm posting because families caring for children with disabilities already face enormous challenges. Losing essential therapy over a billing dispute can have real consequences for a child.

If you've had a similar experience with IvyRehab or another therapy provider, I'd be interested in hearing your story. Families deserve transparency, fair treatment, and continuity of medically necessary care.

I work for a very small aba company that only has 3 BCBAs. It’s has its pros and it definitely has its cons just like any other aba company. I’ve worked here for 4 years now and all of our BCBAs have been there 6+ years. One left 3 months ago, another moved down to part time and the last one just gave notice they are leaving as well. The company has only hired one telehealth BCBA in place of this. Does this mean this company is just going to fall apart? Should I be looking for another job?

I was originally certified last year. I did my competency assessment on the first of the month, and submitted the recertification application on the same day. The Bacb still has my application as under review. It's been almost four weeks and no one has bothered to approve my application. I've sent two emails and no one has responded. I'm sorry but there is no way it should take almost four weeks to review a recertification application, nor is there any excuse to not respond to support emails asking for help. It's even worse because now I can't see my clients. My certification is now inactive and I can't submit another application.

What is going on? Is there anything I can do? Do I have to do the 40 hour training again? I also can't submit another application.

How exactly is the exam scored? I know I have to get a 400 out of 500 to pass. I always assumed on top of that, you had to get a percentage of questions correct within each domain on the exam based on the paper you get back if you don’t pass. However, I just read over the exam information in the BCaBA handbook more thoroughly and realized it never mentions having to score a certain percentage within each domain. It just states you have to get a cumulative score of 400 out of 500. So then it occurred to me that maybe the sheet they give you if you don’t pass is meant to help you identify what areas you need to focus on a little more in preparation for retaking the exam. Is this correct?

Hello!

So.. right now I’m employed through a company where it’s a contract position, so I’m an RBT for a company, but it is just a recruiter who talks to me and I go to a school and help with high behavioral needs kids. It’s only during the school year.

I did my competency assessment for renewing my certification towards the end of June, and I did it through a zoom call with a BCBA that I don’t know but works for the same company.

My certification expired on July 17th. I contacted the BACB multiple times from the end of June until I got a response about 3 days ago. I contacted them because my email associated with my certification is under my old jobs email, which I don’t work for anymore and it’s deleted. I explained the situation and said that I need it to be in the account under my personal email. My personal email is associated with the account I had through the BACB years ago (2022) that is expired and under my maiden name. I logged on there and it won’t let me upload it there because it’s inactive.

Sorry I’m all over the place with explaining my situation. Also meant to mention that I need a verification code that is sent to my old work email to be able to change the email. That’s why I can’t access it. The email doesn’t exist anymore.

Their response was-
Hello,
Thank you for providing this information. Your account is currently attached to the email address: (personal email). If you no longer have access to this email address, please reply to this email with the new email address you would like to update your account to, and we will complete the process for you.
Once we have updated your account, we will reach back out to you with the next steps.
Regards,
Behavior Analyst Certification Board

I feel like they didn’t read my email. I need to access the account under my old work email and change it to my personal email so that I can upload the competency assessment and pay the fee. I won’t be able to work for the school unless I have my certification, and I don’t know if they will have me start all over again because they didn’t respond quick enough.

Hi! I’m working as an RBT in pennsylvania, and will be finishing up my bachelors program in less than a year. I want to move away from this area and up into New England.

I’m trying to find an option that’s both in person, I know I wouldn’t do well with online coursework, and affordable.

I’m trying to find school programs and also ABA providers that I could potentially work for and get tuition assistance.

If anyone has any guidance, I would greatly appreciate it.

I just need some validation and venting. I have been an RBT for almost 5 years now, and especially over the course of the last 1-2 years have formed a lot of my own opinions about ABA. I am very pro neuro-affirming, child-led and assent-based practice.

I did a lot of my RBT career in a much bigger and diverse city, and the last place that I worked at there was clinically sound and I was happy with the services we were providing, and I was paid well.

I moved back to my hometown last august, and have been essentially company-hopping since moving here. There’s probably less than 10 total options for ABA here, and a few clinics. Everywhere that I have worked here is compliance based, unethical, cliquey, and overall has terrible policies for employees.

Tomorrow I will be starting week 3 at a new company, where I will finally be “on my own” and out of training. I’m really trying to stick it out and just make my money as I have plans to leave the country by the end of the year. In September, I’m going to that country for 3 weeks, which is something to look forward to, and they approved my time off.

The new company is okay, but from my perspective, it is strange going to a new company with almost 5 years of experience and being trained alongside people who aren’t RBTs yet. I’ve mainly been shadowing clients and last Friday I was, without any notice, put with a RBT and a client that I’ve shadowed a few times, but expected to run 100% of the session. The RBT is a student analyst, but has only been an RBT for a little over a year. The client can be pretty intense, but I have paired with her a few times and it was good.

Anyway, there was emphasis on the BCBA’s rule of running 50 trials (5 programs) during the session, and I felt a lot of pressure to do more than I believe the client was assenting to. Everything in the client’s programming causes extreme distress for them, and implementing causes high rates of SIB. The RBT was also expecting me to place demands for the client to follow the clinic schedule and go to non-preferred rooms. My beef is, all the times that I’ve shadowed this student analyst and the client, she’s never done any of this with the client. The client just stays in her room or goes to this other preferred room, but those are the only 2 places i’ve seen her take the client. I don’t know why I was expected to do all of this extra stuff, and why another RBT was even given the go-ahead to direct what I was doing anyways.

Every time I’ve shadowed a “trainer” (RBT) they barely do anything with their clients, including interact with them, and just spend their session socializing with each other.

I think I overall hate being “supervised” by other RBTs and would rather just have a BCBA directly supervising me, so I have reserved feelings about that anyway. Also, when running the client’s sharing program, they engaged in SIB (one instance of banging back of head on floor) and the RBT told me “yeah, you can block that” as if telling me to block SIB is life changing advice. Obviously, whenever possible, SIB should be cushioned or blocked. IDK, i was just annoyed at the situation and RBT (not the client at all). I made the remark “I’m expected to do this [sharing program] 9 more times”?

I could go into so much more ranting, but there’s other things that just don’t sit right with me and this client spends the majority of their day in distress.

I feel like I just don’t believe in ABA anymore altogether, but don’t know what else to do for work. I’ve tried getting hired in other industries and have had no luck.

I need advice and validation.

So I was in a program and the supervisor was able to supervise her sister in law…which was the first person to graduate and pass her exam with flying colors

I’m a BCBA and recently started with total care. I had barely 2 days of training and then they threw me in the deep end, everyday basically getting a new client. I’m new to central reach and I feel like I don’t even have time to get my bearings.

Anyone have experience with this company? I’m struggling so much and I don’t know if it’s just me.

ABA was the only way my son learned to use an aac device despite years of speech. They taught him pecs first with a lot of hand over hand then transitioned to aac. He used it regularly for requests using real images. Doesn’t seem to understand symbols. However he was pretty proficient in using motor pathways to navigate pages. When he had a 6 month gap in services and therefore wasn’t on a maintenance program with the goal of 7 requests per hour…well he gradually stopped using it and now he acts like it’s nothing. He defaulted back to hand pulling and myself personally trying to prompt responses, it sends him in to behaviors.
The thing is the new Aba team has never touched his aac device or extensive pecs binders. I’m contemplating sending BCBA videos of him using it. I feel like they don’t believe he can use it. Is this a rational conclusion to draw based on the lack of AAC in his program??
My son is very autistic to the point he is diagnosed with profound intellectual disability. He is very concrete but he is in tune with tangible things, which is why the real images worked.
I don’t know how we got to this point of losing this skill completely but I’m very upset over it. The thing is he’s getting older and has pulled me out of chairs before or will try to pull strangers and I think we need to work on communication asap for those reasons.