Balancing Empathy and Effective ABA with Overwhelmed Caregivers

Providing Behavioral Parent Training (BPT) to overwhelmed caregivers post-COVID is more challenging than ever. In this presentation attendees will receive a brief history on BPT and learn about the common themes in effective BPT, as well as examples of the most commonly implemented evidenced based BPT treatment programs. The talk will focus on teaching providers how to collaboratively triage with overwhelmed caregivers using warmth and practical strategies for streamlining assessment and data collection. Ways to assist providers in effectively identifying obstacles and/or errors to caregiver implementation and approaches for balancing empathy with psychoeducation and accountability will be explored. Strategies to combat common parenting stressors and complications will be addressed. Strategic, realistic and humorous case anecdotes and examples are offered throughout and chosen from thousands of hours of experience directly applying and supervising BPT with stressed caregivers.

Objectives:

1. Attendees will identify current evidenced based behavioral parent training treatment programs.
2. Attendees will identify ways to assist caregivers in more consistently collecting data to inform treatment.
3. Attendees will understand how to more systematically assess and identify the function of obstacles that prevent caregivers effective implementation of treatment skills.