Don't know what route to go down with ABA, find a tutor or train in it myself?

[Toni27]

We want to try using ABA therapy with our son who has moderate ASD. I've found a supervisor in Aba and a consultant.
What's troubling us is how to choose an aba therapist to work with our son and how to afford it. What has occurred to me is that maybe I could train in aba and I could work with our son using the therapys techniques. Has anyone done this themselves? How successful were you? Is it quite easy to learn?
I would prefer to use a proper therapist. I think our son would focus more with a Therapist as it is someone different iyswim. If you have used a therapist how much did you pay per hour? How many hours therapy was your child having per week? How did you afford it?
Thanks very much xx

I would recommend getting an experienced therapist and sitting in all sessions and having a go yourself. I think having a parent involved/on board boosts the programme hugely and means that the programme is 'portable' if you go on holiday.

How did we afford it? We sold our house (but to be fair this wasn't just for the ABA it was for solicitors and tribunals etc.)

ABA works best when the parents/family are fully informed and involved, and I certainly did a lot of reading and research, and went to courses etc. My DH and I are at every workshop, I do all the note taking, record and data keeping etc (I like to know exactly what is going on).

But we have tutors doing the day to day work, and we just try to implement the priciples outside of that, while still being parents and not teachers. I would not have the time to teach him anyway (fulltime job plus weekend and evening work) and I don't honestly think I would be very good at it (not the most patient person!). I would really say, train as much as you can, be as knowldgeable as you can, be involved, but also hire tutors for as many hours as you can possibly afford. Wehave also trained or nanny to do some tutoring.

We pay between £12.50 and £16 an hour depending on experience, and we aim for 30 hours a week, most weeks.

How do we afford it? Only just! We have DLA higher rate for both care and mobility, and a Direct Payment from Social Services of £50 a week. That all does help but nowhere near covers it (hence my long work hours!).

I did some and I also had two tutors which were also trained. Initially we were all novices and the consultant trained us all. I stepped back for a while as I felt the tutors were much better than me! in the end I had one very experienced tutor who charged about 15.00 but that also included travel expenses as she came quite a distance and three others who charged about 10.00 an hour. I eventually won some undoing to pay for ours from LA but that's a whole other story. I used our dLA and my mum helped me pay for it. I think doing some yourself is obviously good financially but also so you know what's going on as well. Plus factor in the time you will spend just keeping on top of the paperwork and resources, getting rewards etc. I didn't appreciate how much work that was going to be initially.

We had a supervisor and consultant and did all the tutoring ourselves for 6 months, then hired a tutor for 6 hours and continued doing the rest ourselves

We had 2 hours a week supervision (so about £400 a month @ £50 p/hour).
We had to pay upfront for a 3 day workshop and initial testing etc (£1500) and consultation was £150 every quarter. So about £7500 for the year. We also paid for a private EP and some legal advocacy fees for Tribunal (added to mortgage).

DS was 3 when he started and DH and I managed 15-20 hours between us a week. We were able to achieve enough progress to win at tribunal. DS continued to go to mainstream nursery 3 half days and get LA provision there and we compared the two and proved much more progress.

Our programme was def not as good as a professional one would have been and we seriously flagged in the second 6 months leading up to tribunal (stress, paperwork and sleep deprivation did not help) and I was more than ready to stop. But even though we were only average therapists we were still much much more effective than the nursery staff. It was enough progress to win at tribunal and we then won a 35 hour per week / 48 week per year programme so worth it.

We used DLA. My mum gave us £200 a month. We eventually got some direct payments and hired a student who wanted to train in ABA for a few hours. Sometimes people can get students at low cost or free (eg psych students from a local uni) or ask family members to do some (not an option for us). Eventually we got the supervisor to do some training in nursery (once we had enough evidence that they were not doing a good job without ABA) and that improved what happened in nursery sessions too.

I think its hard for a parent to do it long term, but for us it was worth doing it for a year to get through appeal / tribunal. It was easy at the start as we just had about 6 programmes - now DS has about 20.

If you have a limited amount of money it can be worth starting off yourself and then hiring tutors once you start to flag. The supervisor was crucial for us and worth every penny.

I haven't applied but Caudwell Children charity apparently sometimes fund ABA

I think it's best to get outside tutors , but if not affordable parents can certainly train up and do a lot of the ABA. The 2 reasons tutors are best: they are trained, and have worked with many other kids, and secondly often a kid behaves better or differently with mum, due to the unique bond, but we can't be there 24/7 - the child needs to learn to behave well for other adults, not just mum.