Chelsea Vale is the Clinical Director at the Behavioral Innovations Forth Worth Chisolm Trail ABA therapy center.
During her senior year at UNT she began working as a Registered Behavior Technician with Behavioral Innovations and fell in love with the field of Applied Behavior Analysis and the individuals that it serves. She then went on to pursue her Master’s Degree in Special Education with an emphasis in Autism and Applied Behavior Analysis from Ball State University. She has been working in the field of ABA since 2014 and has held many positions with Behavioral Innovations. In 2014 she began work as an RBT at the Keller location and was promoted to Program Manager later that year. In March of 2018, she stepped into her most favorite role yet, Board Certified Behavior Analyst.
Prior to COVID, the vast majority of BCBAs at Behavioral Innovations had never conducted a telehealth therapy session. However, I soon realized that it was a valuable service that we were providing families. These telehealth sessions helped me grow as a BCBA®, especially in terms of parent training. It taught me to be flexible and gave me an increased perspective on what is important to the families and their specific situations.
In one of my parent training telehealth sessions, the entire family attended online (grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle, sister, brother, mom and dad) and they ALL FOLLOWED PROTOCOL!! This, in turn, led to the kiddo to increasing independent requests – and sleeping in his own bed for increased durations. His mom even coined the term ‘potty police’ because his siblings were recruited to assist with, and successfully helped with, potty training.
In another parent training session, I was able to teach one of my parents how to implement skill acquisition programs by being a “fly on the wall.” Mom had blue tooth headphones and I was able to observe the session and give her live feedback without distracting the client.
I am currently working with a kiddo to provide direct therapy as a part of his transition from services. We are working on language targets and attending to task, to aid in his success with homeschooling.
I feel it’s not just the kiddos and their families who have benefitted from these telehealth experiences. I could diversify model redirection and reinforcement strategies so that the parent could then practice those with their child.
Chelsea Vale, MA, BCBA®, LBA