QBS, Inc.

QBS would like to welcome Megan Guidi, our new Consultant/Trainer.

Megan Guidi earned her bachelors degree at Allegheny College in Psychology and her Masters of Science in Education Simmons College in behavioral education. Megan is also a Board Certified Behavior Analyst. At Allegheny, Megan focused on the experimental analysis of behavior, which helped to inform her current application of the science. Her experience has focused on the assessment and treatment of severe challenging behaviors in children and adults with developmental disabilities and mental health diagnoses. Other areas of interest for Megan include, parent and caregiver training, social skills evaluation and Organizational Behavior Analysis.

The Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities has begun a program to implement Safety-Care in each of its seven psychiatric hospitals and their affiliated sites. A series of train the Trainer sessions began on January 4th that will result in the certification of 75 department staff as Safety-Care Trainers. The first group of trainers completed their training and will begin training staff this week.

QBS is very excited at this opportunity to demonstrate the effectiveness of Safety-Care in improving outcomes in a large statewide treatment system.

The Kennebec Journal has an article on the innovative BACE program that Wayne Public Schools has established in partnership with QBS.

PUBLIC, PRIVATE APPROACHES DEBATED

A public program push
A handful of public school programs for children with autism have opened in Maine in the past decade. The Wayne program joins existing public school offerings in Gorham and Old Town, for example.

State Education Commissioner Susan Gendron told lawmakers in September that she's pushing special education directors to establish regional, public school programs for children with autism. State education officials, she said, are searching for a public model that can be replicated throughout Maine.

"You have to have enough of a population," Gendron said in a recent interview. "You have to find good staff and it can be successful."

The Wayne program -- which can accommodate eight students -- has access to a critical mass of children with autism by opening its doors to school districts throughout the Capital area.

This year, all three students come from outside the Maranacook-area school district.

Their home school districts pay Maranacook tuition, translating into revenue for the Readfield-based district.

"Our whole goal is to have these kids be as functional as possible in a public school," Collins said. "When you can accomplish that level of functionality, that's everything in the world."

Here's the rest of the article.

The QBS Behavioral Autism Collaboration in Education (BACE) program in the Wayne School District in Maine was recently profiled in the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram:

Maine special education directors have pleaded with the Department of Education for years to acknowledge the need for more trained staff and to recognize the national certification for Board Certified Behavioral Analysts. The supply of BCBA professionals in Maine far exceeds the demand and many children go without a rigorous Applied Behavior Analysis program because local schools simply do not have the expertise to design and implement a public ABA program.

My school district established a regional public autism program in one of its elementary schools this past summer. The Wayne Regional Autism Program is up and running and is offering ABA programming of superior quality for young students in the Augusta area. We use the expert consulting services of QBS Inc, with Dr. Dave Lennox and Lisa Kinney, both BCBAs, working with the staff, students, and parents on a weekly basis. This level of expertise has allowed our staff to implement a phenomenal program that is turning lives around and allowing parents to rediscover their previously non-verbal and withdrawn children. Ask any of our parents and they will tell you what a tremendous difference a good program makes for their kids.

The BACE program has demonstrated that children with autism can achieve gains equivalent to expensive private schooling in a more normalized, more cost-effective public school setting, without the need for the student to spend hours on the bus each day.

Call us today at (866) 429-9211 for more information about this innovative program.

Endicott College in Beverly Massachusetts is about to begin a Certified Behavior Analysis Technician (CABA) program.

The Certified Applied Behavior Analysis Technician program was developed for individuals who hold a high school degree or above and wish to work as an ABA Trained Paraprofessional in a public or private Special Education setting and meet the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 minimum standards to ensure that students who need the most help are taught by highly qualified paraprofessionals.

This program uses the Quality Behavioral Competency training system as its core teaching curriculum. QBS is very pleased to partner with Endicott College for this innovative program.

High Probability Instruction

In a recent article published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, researchers further reinforced the effects of reinforcement for compliance to high-probability instructions, while using behavioral momentum, can result in increased compliance to low-probability (target) instructions.  High-probability sequences and behavioral momentum strategies utilize the delivery of several (easy) instructions, followed by reinforcement,  that result in compliant client behavior immediately prior to the delivery of a low-probability instruction (ones that usually do not result in compliance).  This intervention has been proven to be effective in increasing client compliance time and time again ever since Mace et al, 1988 article.  This is one of many interventions that QBS Inc provides to staff in Quality Behavior Competencies, as well as, it can be added to Safety-Care in a modular format. 

To access the article go to:
http://seab.envmed.rochester.edu/jaba/index.html

(subscription required)