Over the last five years, I have written as the owner of Instructional ABA Consultants, a mama, and sometimes a BCBA. You can reference my original blogs here Owner’s Blog / Autism Blog. Throughout the summer, my team and I have been collaborating on what could be meaningful for the families and caregivers we serve. Through that collaboration, the idea for this series was born. The series will focus on our corner of the world through the perspective of an ABA business owner, BCBA, and a mama walking in the trenches right next to those we serve.
With my pen, I will do my best to share the origins and work of Instructional ABA Consultants, the gift of applied behavior analysis, and parenting to serve our community. The service I hope to provide is connection, knowledge, and community. I know firsthand how defeating lonely parenthood can be and how connection offers healing. Let us begin as I walk beside you sharing what I hope will serve you.
From College to Company Founding
In the spring of 2010, I was midway through my Master’s Degree in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). Social justice and behavior analysis filled my every waking hour. It was only three years earlier that I was teaching preschool, wondering how my autistic students would get access to care. In those days I walked the halls of residential mental health hospitals bearing witness to what happens when children do not get that access and become adults. At twenty-three years old my heart broke as I saw the most vulnerable beings on earth with an immense lack of care. I was working on the Illinois Crisis Prevention Network with the most amazing mentor; Kim Shontz. My position during this time was a Board-Certified Assistant Behavior Analyst tasked with stabilizing the most severe cases in Illinois. I worked with children as young as three to the elderly with one goal: decrease their behaviors and increase community access. Doing this work during my Master’s Degree gave me the advantage of applying the science with the support of faculty.
The results were incredible.
In the two years I worked on the ICPN I had nearly a 100% success rate of meeting the team’s goal. Applied behavior analysis offered the tools necessary to decrease the behaviors and the ICPN’s resources allowed the individuals to then access their community. The issue here was that every individual we served was state-funded without insurance coverage for ABA. It was early in the years that ABA was state-mandated by insurance (2008 for Illinois). The state saw the benefit but did not provide that access to all its residents; the burden being on the consumer. In 2012 I chose to start Instructional ABA Consultants with the mission to provide care across all funding sources. I enrolled as a BCBA for state funding that larger corporations wouldn’t touch; it didn’t pay enough. With a caseload of 20 clients, I began.
What I witnessed all those years ago and deeply desired still rings true today. I witnessed a series of systems that were failing our children and adults with disabilities. The number of kind-hearted, talented people who work within these systems would astound you. Yet they are always working without enough. I would like to believe people who hold positions of power surrounding these systems know of their shortcomings. Yet as time has aged me, I’ve begun to realize that sometimes people only see what they are capable of seeing. Who among us could say they directly supported a system that at its best denied access to care to children and at its worst made billionaires off healthcare profit margins? As humans, it can be incredibly difficult to look at the harm we’ve created because we do not want to believe we have it in us. If each of us was so brave to witness this harm I truly believe it would stop existing. Our hearts would break and from the fracture, an equitable world would be reborn. That day has not come yet and so it is my job to continue to witness the shortcomings of the systems around us and tenderly hold my desire.
Our Greatest Wish
My desire is this: that all children are given the very best chance at life we can give them, that their families are held in support, and should we have failed them as children serve them kindly and well as adults.
I am lucky enough today to be surrounded by a team of BCBAs who desire the same thing in their work at Instructional ABA Consultants. While imperfect, we share the same vision of using the science of Applied Behavior Analysis to transform the lives we touch.
As a mama, with children who have also needed support from others, I now know how precious our work is not just from a professional standpoint, but personally. The sea of parenting a child whose needs are different from the other children can be a dark and swirling world. Yet the waves can calm as resources are offered that will uplift your family to shore. Wade with me darlings, perhaps together we can create a lifeline for all.
Xoxo,
Jessie Cooper