Acceptance and Commitment Training Inside ABA: Enhancing Client Care and Staff Management

Join Alta California Regional Center for a 1-day workshop on July 12 from 9:00 am – 4:00 pm! Registration is required.

Substantial research supports traditional approaches within Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) to support developmentally disabled clients and the staff who work with them. However, more contemporary approaches within ABA have developed, allowing our field to address the complex verbal behavior and private events of clients who struggle during ABA therapy. Likewise, extensive research supports the effectiveness of ABA approaches for managing staff; however, staff report high levels of distress and burnout.

Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACT) is a contemporary behavior analytic strategy for developing skills that help people respond more flexibly to their own suffering by focusing greater attention and energy on behaviors that move them toward what matters most. Although ACT inside ABA is relatively new, research exists that shows that ACT can be an effective way to enhance ABA supports for developmentally disabled clients and the staff who support them. This one-day workshop will train practitioners in the fundamentals of ACT, including the topics of experiential avoidance, acceptance, defusion, present moment, self-as-context, values, and committed action. Most importantly, participants will learn a set of practical procedures for implementing ACT in the context of supporting clients and staff. 

Learning objectives: 

• Describe experiential avoidance as a behavioral repertoire 
• Describe acceptance as a behavioral repertoire 
• Describe defusion as a behavioral repertoire 
• Describe present moment attention as a behavioral repertoire 
• Describe committed action as a behavioral repertoire 
• Describe how to implement at least one simple procedure that trains skills in the area of acceptance, defusion, values and committed action for clients and staff 
• Describe how to implement the ACT Matrix with a client or staff member