What we do

The aim of the ABA Access4All parent campaign is to promote awareness, understanding and much wider access to professionally-managed ABA (Applied Behaviour Analysis) therapies for children and adults with autism and other developmental disabilities throughout the UK.

 

ABA has the strongest evidence base for improving outcomes with such disabilities and yet is still not widely enough understood or available in the UK. We aim to raise awareness of ABA through the media and on social networks, through lobbying and seeking to influence at government and local government level, and through judicial review, with successful settlement in Wolverhampton Read more. The recent accreditation of the UK-SBA's register of ABA professionals by major UK regulator the Professional Standards Authority (PSA) marks a crucial step-change for UK behaviour analysis - Read more.

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A bit about ABA

The science of ABA has its roots in the work of pioneering psychologist Dr BF Skinner in the last century. Of course, like any science, ABA has moved on since those early days, but the principles remain the same: reward or "reinforce" the behaviours we want to see; ignore, or give a dull consequence to behaviour we do not want to see. And the words "reward" and "behaviour" are both misleading. Many think that reward is synonymous with a "treat" – rather, for a behaviour analyst, reinforcement is a consequence that is likely to lead to an increase in a behaviour occurring again, and is therefore meaningful for the individual child.

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ABA is not "one thing" but is centred on and individualised to a child's particular needs and motivations. And the word "behaviour" colloquially has come to mean "bad behaviour". This is why some think, mistakenly, that ABA is just about "managing out" an autistic child's 'bad' or anti-social behaviours. But to a behaviour analyst, the word behaviour covers everything a person "does" – from all our actions, through to talking, reading and writing and even our thoughts and feelings. The principles of learning are universal and ABA can be used to teach any skill; it is used not just in the autism world, but also many other areas, e.g addictions, organisational behaviour and in mainstream schools. Please click here for our leaflet.