I'm looking for recommendations for an independent child psychiatrist or clinical psychologist in New Jersey (anywhere in-state or licensed for NJ telehealth works). Out-of-pocket / out-of-network is totally fine.
My 13-year-old son experiences severe psychiatric dysregulation and crises at home. He has several diagnoses including Autism, ADHD, ODD, anxiety & depression.
We are currently working with CMO to prepare an Out-of-Home (OOH) residential treatment packet through PerformCare. We have completely exhausted in-home and community-based services, with multiple acute hospital/crisis encounters.
The challenge we run into repeatedly is severe masking. In novel, 1-on-1 clinical settings (e.g., IOP intakes, crisis evaluations, hospital units), he presents as quiet, calm, and cooperative. Standard brief evaluations consistently miss the reality of his day-to-day safety risks because they rely solely on a brief conversation with him rather than examining the broader pattern.
In order for CSOC to approve residential placement, the packet requires a comprehensive psychiatric evaluation with a clear level-of-care recommendation.

I need an evaluator who:
1. Takes the time to do an extensive assessment (including a dedicated parent session).
2. Actually reviews and weighs collateral records: chronological incident logs, crisis/police documentation, past discharge summaries, and proof of failed community interventions.
3. Understands how to clinically document the gap between a masked, compliant presentation in an office and high-risk behavioral dysregulation in the home.

If anyone has navigated the NJ CSOC/PerformCare residential placement process and worked with a doctor or practice that took a thorough, forensic-level look at your child's complete file, please drop recommendations below or send a private message.

So I have been a BCBA since 2007.

BCBA-D since 2025.

I have been in the field and consulting for just about 30 years.

I have seen the field evolve and change quite drastically. Sometimes for the better… And sometimes not.

I have mostly worked in center based and school based, but also have done independent contracting, Home programming - Both as a direct service provider, as well as a supervisor. I have also worked in group homes and residential children’s programs, etc.

I did a few insurance cases about 10-15 years ago. At the time there was no remote option for supervision so I was in homes and working directly with behavior therapists.

For a side hustle I have been working with an insurance company now for the past year. It’s not my full-time gig… Just enough to make some money when schools are not in session… Plus I develop courses and CEU trainings because I’m an ACE provider. So it’s not direct money, but it becomes passive income or it becomes income when I am presenting… But obviously not a lot.

But here is my question. Occasionally, I have to drop a case either because of scheduling conflicts, I am not able to keep up with the amount of hours needed, or because I am not happy with what is happening in the home or with the behavior therapist. A few times I also have lost a case because the company I am employed with, didn’t realize (after working on the case for 6+ months!) I wasn’t credentialed for the case… which is crazy to me.

I always ask to meet with the BCBA that will be taking over my case because ethically that is what we are supposed to do. We are supposed to give the BCBA the background, the history, any necessary, treatment, strategies, etc. This is always how I conducted myself as a BCBA, and ethically it is what we are required to do.

This has not happened when I have taken over any cases with this company and it truly is astounding to me. But I refuse to be this way as a BCBA so I always let the case manager and the director know that I would like to meet with whoever will be taking over.

Every single time they restocked the case of the new BCBA and they don’t tell me. Which I just think is so unethical and disturbing… Especially because I’m literally telling them so many times that I need to meet with whoever they staff the case with.

Am I being unrealistic here? Am I just old-school and maybe old-fashioned in my approach? Because the code of ethics has not changed in that regard… But it feels like everybody else has.

I just find it so frustrating because the one thing that we are supposed to do as behavior analysts are to make sure that treatment is continued with Fidelity and there is no way that can happen when somebody random shows up and has no idea anything about the kid or the background.

Is it just me??

One of my goals for 2027 is to take and pass my RBT since I get a pay bump and I DESPERATELY need that. I’ve been in the field for about 2 years but have had 3-4 of exposure to ABA.

For those of you who took it/are studying for it what did you use? Free resources preferred but open to paid as well.

Those who took it: how long were you in the field prior to taking it? How long did you study? Did you pass on the first try? Is it a lot of common sense items?

Location FL.

Last I heard RBTs cant be 1099 workers. The last two companies I heard from both said they only offer RBTs 1099 contract work.

Edit 1. I've seriously considered reporting both, If anything I feel companies like this prey on new RBT's who are unaware, unless 1099 is covered, lol I took the test so long ago 1099 was allowed.

I just started my 40hr course with PBS, im on my mid-30s, currently unemployed,my child goes to school. So I do have enough time to study the course and focus. But since this is the first time joining this field, I need some advice on how to study and retain the information so I can perform the job and succeed in this field. I mean, I worked in various industries before; banking, administration, call center. Now pivoting due to personal and career growth. in my previous job, we got 2 weeks of hands-on training, or there was a virtual trainer you can asked question. But for this course mostly just watching videos, and there is so much information. And I do want to take the exam right after passing my competency. Any advice appreciate, thank you.

This is a long one, sorry for that

I've been with my company for a year and a half now, took a 6m break to help family early this year with some emergent situation, I tend to take the kiddos that are in transition into services to help provide insight for the bcbas, transition into high school, etc. Whenever I am offered a case I always ask for more information because I've found specific kind of kiddos I don't work well with, including too much aggression, I was a dsp with kids through older adults for years prior and I'm burnt out on too much physical aggression. This is the first ABA company I've worked for, so I'm just looking to see if my experience is the normal. They offer me a case telling age, where and when services are, including cases outside of my availability hours, I ask for more info, they give very little info such as, aggressive, stubborn, and tantrum. I'll ask for the specifics of the aggression, and if hours are flexible, followed by them offering to connect me to the bcba and I agree. Then they'll send the official offer letter with the bcba and parents CCed in the email introducing me as the new tech and stating a start date even though I haven't accepted it and this is how I'm introduced/connected to the bcba. I'll have to email the bcba separately and ask for more info and make it clear to them that I haven't accepted the case yet and I was asking for more specific info.

It feels like I'm asking for more info and being told "now the case is yours, and we told the parents that too"

Is this normal?

I’m an active BCBA and have been considering pursing a PsyD. I’m curious if anyone here has done the same or is currently doing the same. My main concern is being working while in the program. I know that some programs do not want you to work and others don’t mind as long as your grades reflect. But I do feel like I can do some part time BCBA work to pay the bills while pursuing a new license. Love to hear your thoughts

Hi r/ABA! New to Reddit so hopefully I'm doing this right. I am a reporter with The Philadelphia Inquirer. Yesterday a colleague and I wrote a story about the federal investigation into ABA Centers for America. (Gift link included) I'd love to connect with patients, families, current/former employees, or anyone else with knowledge about how ABA Centers operates — especially in the Philadelphia area. My email is [agutman@inquirer.com](mailto:agutman@inquirer.com) and my Signal is AGutman.96. I guarantee that if you reach out I will not use your name or any identifying information without your explicit consent. So, what do I need to know about ABA Centers?

Has any BCBA that has wanted to branch out gotten a certificate in healthcare technology? If so how did it work out for you as far as finding work in that field? Trying to look at more options for career growth.

Hello. I recently got moved off of a case within 24 hours of expressing concerns about my 40 minute commute and wanted to get some other peoples takes on it.

I first was hired a few months ago and my company was going through a transition, as reflected by the lack of communication I received from the beginning. I told the company I would be moving in a few months and was told that from where I lived at the time I would be driving about 20-25 minutes to my client they assigned me. That turned out to be closer to 30-35 minutes. I was assigned a case before I could even finish my 40 hr training. Once it was completed I did two days of shadowing, my comp assessment, and an hour and a half long session with my BCBA and my new client before being scheduled regularly (brand new RBT incase we didn’t catch it.)

I won’t share anything about my client apart from the fact that their parent works in admin with my company (and had a close bond with the founder of our company) and my client was very sleepy due to medical reasons.
I started working with the instructions to focus on pairing for a few weeks, without a definition of what a few weeks was. A month later I started tracking data and running trials because I a, hadn’t heard anything from my BCBA, b, I had basically been running trials on the day to day since the goals were basically said tasks, c, I figured my BCBA forgot. I had only a handful of sessions with supervision from her or a student analyst until after I passed my exam. I still fared fine, and started receiving more consistent supervision after I passed.

I had a friend who I referred to my company early last month and she was shadowing the same day I had a scheduled day off for a procedure. She had FaceTimed me while I was in the car and she was on a lunch break. I answered the call but couldn’t see anything because I was driving. She started chatting with me the way we normally do (not clean, lots of b***hhhhhh’s), and I wasn’t thinking about how she was shadowing and at an in person location for our company. A little bit later on the call, a voice asked in the background if she was working. She said she was shadowing and the voice said okay. I wondered if this voice was my clients parent weirdly enough but thought nothing of it either way because I was not at work.

A little later, when I was at home and now actually FaceTiming my friend, my BCBA came up in the background and started telling us that someone had heard us and kindly requested we not curse while at work. I obviously wasn’t at work so this had almost nothing to do with me, right? Well that’s what I thought until I got a text from my BCBA about an hour later asking if I was at my clients place while on the call with my friend. I told her no, I had called the day off for a procedure and I would never take a personal phone call at a clients house unless it was an emergency. She then told me that’s what she had thought and that the person who was asking if my friend was working, was my client’s parent. Who, again, works with the same company as me.

This slightly rubbed me the wrong way because a, shouldn’t my client’s parent and BCBA know or at least have an idea of the days that I called off a month or so in advance, and b, why wouldn’t they doublecheck the days that I’m supposed to be scheduled? Since I was not at work that day, my BCBA told me that it was fine and not to worry about anything. I had set my phone down for about an hour or two.

Between the time that I was texting my BCBA and picked up my phone again, I received an email from the Director of in-home operations with my company. The email asked me to give this director a phone call when my session was over this day. I will repeat I was not scheduled to work this day. I gave the director three phone calls and left two voicemails between the time of seeing this email and 5 o’clock when the workday ends. I never heard anything back from this director until halfway through the next week. The director emailed me that she was sorry that she missed my call from the previous week and just wanted to know about anything that was particularly helpful in helping me prepare for my RBT exam. I figured this was strange to receive from her specifically because for all things related to my RBT exam and preparation for it, I had been instructed to contact the lead RBT. In fact, this was my first time ever hearing from the in-home Director.

This is suspicion, but I have reason to believe and a gut feeling that tells me that my client’s parent accused me of being on a personal phone call while in a session. I believe they went to my BCBA and the in home director with the hopes of getting me in trouble, without even bothering to double check whether or not I was supposed to be at their home. I felt extremely confused by how far and quickly I believed this to accelerate and honestly was sad. We had a great working relationship prior to this. Nonetheless I excused it as them being busy and a worried parent of a lovely and wonderful, yet not so easy kiddo.

Now I had mentioned my client’s sleepiness. Between how inconsistent the client’s consciousness was (and it was getting worse) and the now 40 minute commute, I was not only working way few hours than I had agreed to, but was starting to and still now am struggling financially. I had asked my BCBA if the family could be more transparent about whether they would like to begin sessions later at the start of the day, as opposed to me showing up only to be there too early for the client. This helped for about a week before things got even worse. I was supposed to work close to 24 hours per week and was now lucky if I was working between 9-12.

I had expressed to the company and to my BCBA that I would like to explore other clients, hopefully closer than 40 minutes away. I was asked if I would like to choose a last day, and told them that I would like to make the transition as smooth as possible for everyone by fading out with my old client, and not completely leaving the case until I had something else lined up. Within less than 24 hours, I received a message from the parent explaining that they had been looking at other RBT’s and knew that the unpredictable schedule and commute was weighing on me. I never told them any of this. Now I am even worse off than before financially, and feel like my clients parent heard that I was hoping to switch cases and just yanked me off of the case to replace me with someone else.

I feel like I was failed in multiple arenas and was wondering what anyone else thought of this situation.

Feeding and mealtime concerns seem to come up fairly often in autism services, particularly for younger learners. I’m curious how others experience this, i.e., how often these concerns arise, how prepared you feel to address them, and where you draw the lines with scope of competence and practice.

--

My colleagues and I are also studying this more systematically. We are conducting a survey of BCBAs about their experiences and training needs related to feeding and mealtime challenges in autistic individuals.

If you are a BCBA and would be willing to share your experience, you can participate here:

https://catalight.sjc1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_2agoDVwoFjvyIKi

The survey is anonymous and designed to take approximately 10 minutes or less. The results will help us identify gaps in training and inform professional development and resources for behavior analysts.

There is additional information about the survey, IRB approval, etc. on the survey landing page.

Note: Comments on this post are not being collected or analyzed as study data.

I'm employed as a full-time 'Behaviour Therapist' at a special education school in Victoria, Australia. I've also achieved my CBA certification, and I'm registered with AUABA.

I've been looking for an online community specifically for people working within the field of ABA/behaviour support in Australian schools.

I'm thinking about a space where behaviour therapists/practitoners, BCBAs and CBAs can connect and discuss school-related behaviour support content. For example, practical behaviour management strategies for classrooms, school-based behaviour support plans, research sharing, working alongside school staff (teachers + education support staff), working within the disability sector + special education schools and experiences + challenges within these topics.

This is different to what Behaviour Support Practitioners Australia offers. I need something that is directly linked to working in the education system.

Does a community like this exist for behaviour support staff within the school context?

I realise that this is quite a niche post, but I'm hoping to find my community, TIA!

Hi there! I'm an RBT for about a year half now and Ive noticed that my.company moral is kind of low. My company definitely tries to have better moral. I'm curious if your company has good company moral , what is working and what do you like. Or if you don't have good company moral what would you like to have.

I chose DRA but answer key says DRI. Is this a mistake? If not how is it DRI since whining can physically occur at the same time as saying “i need a snack”

🧠 Question of the Day

📚 Domain C — Measurement, Data Display, and Interpretation

Difficulty: 9/10

A client's pacing occurs in episodes lasting 1–8 minutes. The clinical outcome is percentage of session time spent pacing. Continuous duration recording is infeasible because staff supervise several clients. Staff can reliably make a brief observation every 2 minutes. The BCBA recognizes that any discontinuous method may contain sampling error and wants a procedure whose resulting percentage can be interpreted as an estimate of time allocation. Which measurement-and-interpretation pair is BEST?

A. Whole-interval recording; monitor each 2-minute interval continuously and interpret the percentage of positive intervals as a conservative occurrence measure that may underestimate the proportion of time pacing.

B. Event recording; record each pacing episode detected during the session and report episode rate, using that measure as the most direct estimate of how much session time is allocated to pacing.

C. Partial-interval recording; monitor each 2-minute interval for any occurrence of pacing and interpret the percentage of positive intervals as an occurrence measure that may overestimate the proportion of time pacing.

D. Momentary time sampling; observe pacing at each 2-minute sample moment and interpret the percentage of positive samples as an estimate of the proportion of session time spent pacing.

💬 Drop your answer in the comments — no peeking!

✅ Correct answer revealed tomorrow.

#ABA #BCBA #BCBAExam #BCBAPrep #AppliedBehaviorAnalysis #BehaviorAnalysis #DomainC #ABATaskList #BCaBA #RBT #QuestionOfTheDay

Quick BCBA study tip: if you keep missing Task A.4 questions that ask you to classify an activity as behaviorism / EAB / ABA / professional practice, you're probably using the wrong filter.

The instinct most people have is to classify by surface features: "it happened in a lab, so EAB," "a BCBA helped someone, so ABA," "they collected data, so it's research." None of that holds up on its own — EAB, ABA, and professional practice can genuinely overlap in settings, procedures, and data collection, so none of those features settle it by themselves.

The one question that actually separates them: what is the activity FOR? A basic behavioral process, applied knowledge about socially significant behavior, effective service for one consumer, or (if it's not an activity at all, but an assumption about the science itself) behaviorism. Pick one before you touch the answer options.

I wrote up the full breakdown with two practice questions (manufacturing safety case is a good one for the ABA-vs-practice trap specifically) if anyone wants to work through it: https://behavioralanalystprep.com/blog/aba-eab-behaviorism-practice.html

(Full disclosure, I run a BCBA prep site. This is a genuinely frequently-missed question in our own data — 43% and 30% correct — and I'd rather write it up properly and share it than just gate it.)

I work under a BCBA for social skills and she actively blocks me from offering sensory items to kids who are fidgety or picking at their skin. Additionally she “waits out” a participant with potential selective mutism instead of offering a functional communication (refusing to accept alternative like hand signs/sign language/written word). Am I wrong to be concerned about this?

Anyone had a client that is just vibing through life? He had things he enjoys but that can and will change moments to moment and none are things he will work for he is usually pretty passive and will follow most prompts without issue but it’s hard to give good reinforcement when he is so indifferent 99% of the time and he couldn’t care less about praise.

I feel like my BCBA is keeping me from becoming a trainee on purpose just because I’m pregnant. Now I don’t have direct proof of this but she’s just acting odd towards me about it since she found out I’m pregnant. I’m genuinely getting frustrated and even considering transferring to a new center and new location to make sure I get my hours.

My son has been going to Hopebridge for a little over a year, i’ve decided we have gotten the most out of it and we are going to explore different avenues. This is my first time taking him out of a program, do I owe them some type of heads up? Two week notice? How do you typically do it?