Jennifer: One of the things that I know that
we really want to touch on with you, and I
know that our listeners and ourselves are
really interested in, is creating a strong
treatment plan and goal writing for those
times, because it is tricky and I know I don't
think people put enough emphasis on that.
And I know that I've been on the receiving
end fo getting a goal, and I am like "Really,
this is not appropriate."
And I am sure I have written similar goals.
So I wanted to talk with you both about when
you are starting to write goals for a child,
what do you look at?
What do you take into account?
One of the big things I want to touch on too,
is I think so many times you can tell the
goal was take right from the self protocol
and you're like, "Ahh, how does that translate?
What does that mean?
Why are we even working on that?"
So how do you translate that assessment scores
to create really meaningful goals that are
going create impact for that child?
Amy: It's funny, in ABA there is a term that
they use over and over again and it's the
term, socially significant.
That the goal or the aim of an ABA program
is to create socially significant change for
a child.
I think that term for both Amber and I is
something that is top-level for us.
And every time we do an assessment, we review
a child's skills and we are trying to look
at the next goals.
We are looking at what we can to cause socially
significant change.
Socially significant means someone else is
going to notice it!
They are going to go out into another environment
and be able to use whatever skill we are teaching
and really have e them receive, what we would
consider a reinforcement or attention, for
the use of that skill.
So we are always looking for things that are
functional and things that will span across
areas.
We struggle a lot with goals that are so specialized
that they can only use them in one room of
one class in one place of the school.
It's like, "Okay, that is awesome but what
are we actually teaching that is going to
transcend the environments that this person
has to function in?
Amber: And I think that when you say, "We
look at the assessment."
We go through the assessment process to see
where those deficit are.
And we take that information and say, "Okay,
yes, you have this deficit but how is this
impacting your life?
Whether you are in school, academically, with
your family, or how you are communicating
in your community, where do those deficits
actually show up, outside of a test that we
have given at our table?"
And Jennifer, I think you hit on this when
you said, "Why?
Why am I working on this?
That is literally what we come back to every
single time.
We have identified an area of need, but why
are we going to focus on it?
And how are we going to translate that into
a socially significant skill that will make
a difference in a child's life.
