Beyond the Spectrum: Diverse Paths in Applied Behavior Analysis with Nicole Parks, Part II

ABA on Tap is proud to present Nicole Parks (Part 2 of 2):

Nicole Parks is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst with nearly two decades of experience across diverse settings, including forensic systems, mental health, and autism therapy. As the Chief Visionary Officer at Rooted Consultation, she champions the expansion of Applied Behavior Analysis beyond its traditional scope, focusing on subspecialties and innovative applications of behavioral science. Nicole is a passionate advocate for mentorship, ethical practice, and supporting BCBAs in building careers that align with their interests and expertise. She believes that ABA can make a significant impact in areas like addiction treatment, child welfare, and the justice system, and actively mentors future behavior analysts to push the field forward.

Along with Mike and Dan, Nicole explores the possibilities for BCBAs beyond the traditional focus on autism therapy. She shares insights into creating a fulfilling career in subspecialty areas of ABA, based on her experience in areas like forensic systems and mental health. Topics include:

• Breaking the Mold: Nicole's journey from forensic and mental health work, and what drew her back to non-traditional ABA practice.
• The Subspecialty Framework: A plan for diversifying your ABA practice, focusing on supervision, learning, and job creation.
• Funding vs. Fulfillment: The financial realities and potential for burnout in traditional ABA settings, and why many BCBAs may consider alternative paths.
• Real-World Scope: The importance of understanding your scope of competence and strategically expanding it to thrive in diverse roles.

This brew offers a wide array of flavors across  Applied Behavior Analysis palette, for both seasoned BCBAs looking to diversify their careers, and aspiring behavior analysts seeking inspiration for non-traditional paths. Sit back, sip deliberately and ALWAYS ANALYZE RESPONSIBLY. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_06: 0:10

Welcome to ABA OnTAC, where our goal is to find the best recipe to breed the smoothest, coldest, and best-tasting ABA around. I'm Dan Lower with Mike Rubio, and join us on our journey as we look back into the ingredients to form the best concoction of ABA on tap. In this podcast, we will talk about the history of the ABA food, how much to consume to achieve the optimum buzz while not getting too drunk, and the recommended pairings to bring to the table. So without further ado, sit back, relax, and always analyze responsibly.

SPEAKER_05: 0:53

All right, all right. This is your ever-grateful co-host, Mike Rubio, and welcome back to part two with Nicole Parks. Enjoy.

SPEAKER_07: 1:03

Wow, damn near double.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06

Right. So I was like, what would I even do with all that money? This is crazy. Now, what I didn't realize until I got there was, yeah, right, you're not gonna be making that because that's not a salary. People are gonna be canceling on you left, right, and center. You're gonna be driving all over creation because I have clients from the mountains of North Carolina all the way over the border in South Carolina. Um, and I was literally, I was so miserable at that job. I was by myself for like the first however many months. My regional director lived in Florida. So I saw him like one time and like he was a great person. He was wonderful, he did what he could to support me. But the system was just not set up for my success. And then eventually I did get one or two other behavior analysts in that area, and the three of us could kind of commiserate with each other about what was going on. But ultimately, I was like, I don't like this setup. I'm not happy here. Um, I don't like the idea that every hour is being accounted for. I'm driving all over the place, people are canceling, I can't give support to anyone. Uh, I'm working like 50 hours a week and I'm getting paid for 25.

SPEAKER_07: 2:01

That's I I don't want to sound glass half empty on this one, but it seems like that's not uncommon today. 12 years later, we we hear that a lot, we see that a lot. Uh, we've gone to conferences, we hear of people talking about paying um BCBA's absorbent rates um much higher than even our reimbursement rates are. And we're like, how in the world is this happening? I don't even know how this is happening. You must be working these BCBAs um to the bone. And kind of like you said, um, as a new BCBA, hearing that you can make double or make this amount of money, like, yeah, people don't know what they don't know. So they jump right into it and they're like, this is awesome. And now they're driving wherever they're having to work 50, 60 hour work weeks. Um, and then they get burnt out really, really quickly. I still think, I don't know if it's an epidemic in our field, um, but it's definitely still prevalent in our field, your exact situation.

SPEAKER_00: 2:54

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I ended up hearing about a job back in Florida with a behavior analyst that I knew from when I worked at the state of Florida. He was a behavior analyst whose treatment plans I would review and stuff like that. He was actually taking over a company. Um, they were going to start working in early intervention and autism. They had previously done a med waiver company. And one of my friends had left a position there. And the psychologist that he used to work with for the state of Florida, he was working there. So it's kind of like his would be like a real easy kind of like just come do this job, like we already know you kind of situation. Um, and so I went and did that. I ended up working there almost six years. I ended up being a regional director there. Um I had two centers that I was over, and ultimately they ended up bringing in private equity money.

SPEAKER_02: 3:39

As they knew it didn't it didn't go well.

SPEAKER_00: 3:42

I gave it a year under private equity. Uh, wasn't feeling great about it to begin with, but I gave it a year and it was horrible. Um, all my staff were miserable. They came in and made terrible decisions that were for financial reasons and no other reasons. Um and I was really, really burned out. And I remember I went to my husband, he was a stay-at-home dad at the time. He had been a stay-at-home dad um for many, many years so that I could focus on my career. And I went to him and I'm like, I don't know what we're gonna do, but like if I don't leave this job, like I'm not gonna, like I just can't do this anymore. I feel like I don't have a soul anymore. I don't love this field anymore that I've loved my whole life. We have to do something. I don't know what's gonna be. And I walked in and I resigned. I gave him two months' notice. I walked away from a six-figure salary and we sold our house and bought an RV and traveled for nine months. So I figured out what to do with the rest of my life.

SPEAKER_07: 4:35

Oh, living the dream. Are we good on the audio, by the way? Okay. Um, it's we relate to that so hard. The first company, the one I met Mike at, Mike was actually my first supervisor. Um, I left just before, and Mike left uh significantly before, but they got bought out by private equity, heard about how bad it was. Everything was, you know, KPIs. The that's what we have to work to, not client anything clinical, just KPIs. We gotta do that. God forbid we ever have a supervisor meeting that talks about anything clinical. It's always about just maximize those contracts. So so many people left, um, created another company, um, the one that Mike and I just left uh kind of recently, um, which was different. Everybody ran from private equity, and then what do you know? They sold the private equity. So there's that's there's a really interesting, um, you know, cyclical nature, I feel like, in the field of that private equity. It seems very hard to escape. It seems like a lot of times the only way to escape it is to do your own thing. And then you're now faced with the challenge of I'm sure private equity probably flaunts some pretty nice finances to to buy these companies out. Um and then it's best.

SPEAKER_00: 5:48

Yeah, what was kind of more heartbreaking for me is that um the we didn't get bought out, our company still existed. Uh, my boss stayed on as the executive director, but we just brought in the other people to be like the CEO and a new CFO and a new whatever. And um I know that it was the right thing for my boss to do for himself personally, and I know he felt like he was doing what was gonna save the company. It was ultimately what the company needed, but it was really heartbreaking because it completely changed our relationship. Um I felt like he only had so much he could do to support me because he ultimately didn't have the decision-making power anymore. You know, he was less than 50% ownership at this point, and so um I am sure he was sad to see me go. And in a lot of ways, I was sad to leave that company because I'd invested a lot into it. Um but it just became very apparent that no one there was gonna be supporting me. And it's really hard for people that have never been a clinical director and don't understand how much you buffer executive decisions from your direct care staff and you hold all of that in. It's like so emotionally um difficult because you're taking in all the staff issues, everything they're feeling, the client issues, the family's issues. You're just absorbing all of this emotional turmoil all the time. And you're supposed to stay calm, cool, collected, in charge, whatever. And it's exhausting. It is so exhausting. Um, you're at the clinic and all of a sudden you're like now a doctor, plumber, IT person, whatever. And everyone just comes to you thinking that you just have the answer to everything.

SPEAKER_01: 7:34

Yep.

SPEAKER_00: 7:35

Um, and it's it's just as exhausting. It's really, really exhausting, especially when you're not getting any support from the people above you.

SPEAKER_07: 7:43

Especially if the people above you, um, you know, we we dealt with this um uh at one of our our previous jobs when you're trying to advocate for your staff and the people above you are are kind of ixnaying that. They're they're negating your your advocate, they're like, no, we can't afford that or we can't do this, and you're really trying to advocate. But on the staff end, you're just hearing people being frustrated, so you're kind of getting it from both ends, right? You're getting it from the higher ups of we we don't have enough money, you gotta make more, we gotta make more, you're not doing enough, and then you get it on the lower end of we need more, we need more, we're not getting enough as you're trying to serve the clients at the same time. And like you said, you're dealing with all of the behavioral issues and um the the client side of things. Um that I feel you we were definitely um wore that that hat for a long period of time, and that is absolutely exhausting.

SPEAKER_05: 8:32

Um yeah, the the one thing that gets me, and I I'm gonna overgeneralize here a little bit. I number one, I've yet to hear a good private equity story. Let me just start with that. Um unless it's from the person that sold and then cashed out a little bit, and then sometimes they were uh against private equity the entire time until they sold and made some money. And again, I like the way Nicole put it. Good for them. You can't hate on somebody for that. But it does create this interesting internal conflict and dialogue with people, and I I just don't I mean I guess it's hard to discern how to actually make that work. It seems as simple as a have your bosses who are pushing the KPIs over and over, who push these numbers, and you can look at them in the face and go, wow, you have no idea what this actually looks like out in the field. And if you just spend a couple days out with us in the field, and then that seems to be an impossibility sometimes just to get them to come out and watch. And then in the experiences where I've had them come out and watch, it always seems a very cursory observation, and then we're right back to just talking about numbers that are completely out of context with what the actual service parameter looks like. I don't know. I I said a lot there, I don't know if it means anything. What what are your impressions on that, Nicole? I mean, what's what's the answer? How is there a way to actually get I mean, private equity to understand what the service is, or or is this just a lost cause? This is just about money. It's called private equity, it's not called uh private equity and uh effective, uh efficient services. It's called private equity.

SPEAKER_00: 10:10

Yeah, I think that's what a lot of people don't understand. I actually made a LinkedIn post about this. It's like the definition of private equity is like they're here to make money. They're investing money so that they can cash out that money in three to five years. Like it is a it's there for a reason, that's what it's there to do. Um, you don't want to completely like sour your product because then you have nothing to sell. But ultimately at the end of the day, like that's what you're gonna be focused on is like cutting those corners. And business people know business, and behavior analysts a lot of times don't know business. Yeah, they know behavior analysis. And I guess I should add that during my time as a regional director at this company, I got an MBA because I want to be able to speak business with people. Um so that's kind of like my thing, uh is very innate in me, is that I always want to learn as much as I can possibly know about anything that I have to do. So, in my role, like I learned how to do credentialing, hiring everything. I was like, if it has to, if it has to be done, I want to touch it. I don't like waiting on other people to do things. I'm an incredibly efficient person. So um to my own fault, sometimes like I take on a lot more than I probably should because I just want to make sure that ball keeps rolling. Um, so yeah, I learned a lot. And so ultimately when I left that position, my job or the reason I started Routa Consultation originally was I was gonna help other companies start up ABA practices and be able to survive without private equity. So I was gonna help people learn like this is what you need to know into OBM, right? Like this is what you need to know about money, this is what you need to know about opening a business, being thoughtful about that, everything else. And I did help, you know, a few different companies do that. But ultimately in that process, I learned that like the whole system is sick, like the whole system has a problem. And it's only kind of gotten worse. Um I see behavior analysis posts all the time. They're like, we're not getting paid enough. And I was like, have you ever looked at the dollars? Because most businesses I know who have looked at their dollars are making zero money off of you if not losing money on you to try to get you in there for that price. They are paying you more than they're getting reimbursed, and guess where that money's coming from? Your RBT reimbursement. Okay. And then we're like, the R we can't pay the RBTs more money. And the thing is, is like it's a limited system. People think that this is some expansive system, and that every person that owns an AVA company is just trying to like roll in the dough and like screw everyone else over. Are there people that are probably doing that? Sure. You know, and but not everyone is, and you can have like the best intentions of running a good ethical business, and the numbers are against you in a lot of states, the margins are just not there, they're very, very tight. If you make a mistake, if you get audited and you have to pay back insurance or whatever, you can be shut down in a matter of like months. That could be it, it could wipe you out. And I don't think people understand that. I don't think they understand that at all. And I'm gonna say something that's not very popular. This will be, you know, whatever, but I don't love the RBT credential. I don't love it. I think it came out of necessity from the insurance thing of like we've got to just be serving more and more and more and more and more clients. We don't have enough BCBAs to do that. So now we're gonna create an RBT credential. And essentially what it did is it like eliminated the need to have a BC ABA credential. Those people, where are you gonna get a job? There's almost no state where they need you for anything anymore because if it comes to reinsur uh insurance reimbursement, they get paid no different from you for you than they do for an RBT. And a lot of insurances don't allow VC ABAs to do 9715 or 5'6, so you're not helping out anyone. Um, so it kind of got rid of that. And I feel like there's a really not all, again, not all RBTs, but when I've had to hire at any position I've been in in the last several years, um I almost would prefer to not interview you if you're an RBT already. I want you to be someone that I'm gonna train from the ground up and I will teach you behavior analysis. You come to me loving kids or loving, you know, being a fun person or the personality traits basically that I can't teach. And I will teach you the science because I find that as soon as people get that RBD credential, they come in. I mean, I have more people no show to interviews that are RBTs than anyone else. They will schedule an interview with you and just not come, not email you, not nothing. They want to come in and they're like, well, I want$25,$30,$40 an hour because I could get that over at ABC company. And they know that that's what they're doing because if you go on Reddit or Facebook groups or anything like that, that's what they're telling each other to do. Hey, you want to keep making more money? Leave that company, go to the other company because they're gonna, they'll beat that company by a dollar because they need a body because they want to start more clients. Okay. So that is like no, there's no stability for the clients that are being served. There's no stability for those companies because you keep rehiring and rehiring and retraining and all this other stuff. So that's why I said to me, the whole system is sick and broken, and we all have to work together to fix that, or we're just gonna keep like I cannot stand to keep trying to solve the same problems over and over again and get no nowhere with it. Um, and that's why I was like kind of wanted to wash my hands of AVA therapy and just be like, y'all have fun in that's so nice because I want no part of it anymore. It's just a mess, and we're not all on the same page about that. Um, and I don't just don't I don't want to play this game anymore.

SPEAKER_05: 15:32

I have a couple thoughts on that, but I bet you do too. No, no, no, go. We've got plenty to talk about here.

SPEAKER_07: 15:36

We we agree with that so much, and that was actually one of our kind of guiding lights. It's one of our visions, is we want to make the RBT position sustainable um for RBTs because it's it's not it's not sustainable. But I have a question for you going back because I want to make sure you uh we understand exactly your your premise here. Um so the RBT credential, you're not a fan of it because of kind of the way it's administered, or you're not a fan of it because it takes BCBAs away from doing direct work and puts it on the RBTs.

SPEAKER_00: 16:49

Um it's not so much that it puts it on the RBTs, because I think before we had an RBT credential, that's still happening. They were just behavior text. I don't think it's practical or possible for BCBAs to serve everybody. Um but I think that I think it's just kind of one of those I I think it instead of helping people that are passionate about the field, and again, this is very general. I I know some amazing RBTs, so I don't want to make it seem like this is everybody. But I also see a lot of people that are like, oh, what's a quick thing I can do that will make me good money? Ah, you could become an RBT. And then you're not in it for the right reasons. And those are the people that are job hopping to get the next dollar, the next dollar, the next dollar, the next dollar. Listen, we all want to have an income that's livable. We all want a livable wage. I don't think that there's anything wrong with any person wanting a livable wage. I would a thousand percent agree that RBTs have really, really hard jobs. And if they work in a company that does not support them or adequately train them or any of those things, they have an even harder job. I think RBTs deserve to be paid well. But I think if the only thing you're worried about is making money in this field, in any kind of helping profession, you're in trouble.

SPEAKER_02: 18:02

I agree.

SPEAKER_00: 18:03

And that is one of the things that I tell people that want to get out of ADA therapy is I say you are gonna have sticker shock when you see what you are gonna have to make at all these other places. Because if you want to work in all these other areas, there's a good chance you're gonna take a pay cut of a lot because you are blinded by insurance money.

SPEAKER_02: 18:23

Yep.

SPEAKER_00: 18:24

That is not realistic if you're gonna work in these other places and you have to be prepared for that.

SPEAKER_07: 18:28

I agree a hundred percent with what you're saying. And this is not the field to get in if you want to make money. One thing we're running into in California is that you so they passed a minimum wage of$20 an hour for fast food workers. Um, we pay RBTs more than that, but a lot of places don't. Um, so you're talking about competition from based on you know the reimbursement rates, um, competition like margins are are not that high. Um, we don't have a lot of RBTs. Most of our services be C B A direct, although we do have RBTs at our company. Um but if you're saying that the way that a lot of companies are sustainable is that they about break even on the BCBAs, but make money on the RBTs, which is totally true. I've heard that from countless examples, then the margin has to be high. The issue is the reimbursement rates are low, and people are gonna make more money working at Chick-fil-A, McDonald's, or Wendy's, than they are as an RBT, which is probably gonna be way less stressful. You're not gonna get hit and kicked and pooped on and stuff like that working at Chick-fil-A, presumably.

SPEAKER_05: 19:31

Well, and the continuity of hours, the predictability of your paycheck, the idea that you're not gonna not get paid that hour because some customer gives their chicken sandwich back, right? You get a cancellation as an RBT, that's it. Now you've lost two hours of your income. And it's really hard to predict that. I mean, uh here where we are in San Diego, I I really feel for RBTs in the sense that they're carrying the weight of the work and you know, sometimes not making enough, and it's not their fault. Some client went out of town, or there's not enough clients to then replace that or sub opportunities to to help them, and now that means they don't get paid. So, yeah, to your point, you know, and I've said it here on the show. Um, I know that people went and got a psychology degree hoping to work with that psychology degree. I you know, people don't do that to then go work at Chick-fil-A, all due respect to Chick-fil-A workers. I don't think that's the ultimate vision of getting your master's in psychology, but the idea that you could work as an RBT, and uh I like the point you make, Nicole. There there's there's a there's a heart work aspect to it too. You're not in this for the fame and the money, and hopefully some of us actually do get there at some point because we discover something great for a lot of people. But you're doing this really because you care about working with people and they're There's a lot of reinforcement value in the outcomes that you're able to be a part of, as well as the you know, idea that that you get paid for it. I, you know, on any good day, I've done a lot of early intervention. I'm like, I got paid to play all day today. That's really cool. You know, and that parent was really happy, and that kiddo was really enjoying it. And that parent got to see that kiddo do something that they'd never done before, and that has all sorts of collateral effects that I can't even begin to measure right now, and that feels really good. And I I really wish that RBTs could that that really have their heart into it, could benefit from that and you know have continuity in their work. The assumption is that any RBT, any good RBT worth their salt is gonna become a big, bad BCBA. That's not fair. That's not fair. I mean, you you should be able to work as a career RBT if we get this right. So I don't know if you guys have anything to say about that.

SPEAKER_00: 21:31

Absolutely, yeah. I mean, I think that people need to think about the fact that some people just want to be in RBT. Some people don't want to go back to school and they shouldn't have to. There should be places and ways for them to grow in the companies that they work in. And one of the companies that I did, um, I started off consulting for, but ultimately stayed on as the clinical director because I was asked to do that for a while. Um, one of the big things that we did is we created jobs. There was no like layout of like, this is all the jobs we're gonna have. We basically had like RBT like plus kind of things. So I'd meet an RBT, you are fantastic with other RBTs, you make them feel so at home, you answer questions for them, people are coming to you. You're gonna be the RBT mentor, you're gonna get a pay raise, this is gonna be your thing, and this is what you're gonna do. New RBTs, you're gonna meet with them, and you are going to check in with them, and they're gonna feel like they have a peer that's not like a supervisor of theirs that they can really commiserate with. Uh, or hey, you're really good at training, you're gonna be the RBT trainer. You're RBT plus, so now you're like the trainer, or you're really great with curriculum development, so you're gonna do that, and just making room for that and letting that be a little bit organic. I mean, you want to have somewhat of a business plan, but some things need to be organic because you just need people that have skills that you weren't even thinking about that can now benefit your business in some way that you weren't even thinking about. And I think that kind of brings to mind too the fact that, and this is something I don't think RBTs take into consideration, is there are companies that will make sure that you have a more stable paycheck. That's like the one thing that RBTs will say all the time, right? I wish I had stable, consistent hours. If a company is gonna do that, you're gonna make less per hour because it's just math. The math will not math otherwise. So you can either get paid more and only get paid for the hours you work, or maybe you get paid a little bit less, but I can give you some admin time when I have a cancellation. I can give you additional training.

SPEAKER_02: 23:25

Yep.

SPEAKER_00: 23:26

Every, you know, I can say, like, hey, this person's struggling during supervision, they're really not getting DTT or whatever the case may be. And I'm gonna pull you and I'm gonna give you additional training hours one-on-one for that. And I can afford to do that because I'm not at my tippy tippy top pay range.

SPEAKER_05: 23:41

Absolutely. It's one thing we're playing with a little bit, right? The notion that um, and this is difficult because for a young professional, the higher wage is always gonna be more attractive. But the idea that we can say lower wage overall on average, but guaranteed aspects of your job so that when you cancel, you still have work, and we can use that time for professional development as well as program development as so you're doing something now. You know, uh, from a business perspective, and I'm not a business guy, I know that that becomes troublesome for people in terms of the numbers because now you're paying when nothing is coming in. But I I we're we're really hopeful to to try and crunch those numbers differently and continually looking at the idea of you know, let's spend a few bucks to have that RBT go buy materials as opposed to pay them time to make them, uh you know, whatever it is. How do we keep things going? Uh, how do we spend more time with the RBTs in session? How do we do those things that maybe are going to compete with that three, four dollar difference on the hour and create some semblance of continuity? Uh, we um you know, until recently, we we went through an experience where we were working for better part of eight years under a capitated contract, which I know people have uh you know concerns about rightfully so, but what it meant for us is that it just incented us to uh to recommend the hours that we thought people needed along with what they could actually sustain and receive. And that was incredible. And the idea that our RBTs got canceled on, came back to the office, did program development or professional development, or just sat and talked about casework, or maybe just took an hour break. Imagine that. Somebody gets to chill out at work and talk to their colleagues. It was amazing before COVID. We had we had nobody leave. Yep. We had I think we fired one person, you know, and and two people left to the pursue higher education or something. It was the most incredible continuity I've ever uh experienced, and we we're really keen on trying to get back to that despite some of the uh illness and clear symptoms in our system, which I think you put very poignantly. I think that's true. It's we have from the reimbursement rates to what we've made the RBT um uh position to the way the lot of us are conceptualizing service delivery, there's a lot to be remedied.

SPEAKER_07: 26:07

Yeah, we didn't uh we didn't lose anybody. Like you said, we had guaranteed hours, paid admin time. We weren't the highest pay, but we didn't lose anybody. We had a great company culture, people could count on their money, even through COVID. Like nobody lost any hours through COVID. We transitioned through telehealth. Um, and then kind of towards the end of COVID, there was an interesting shift of people being like, not not a lot, but like we said, we went from zero turnover to a little. I know a lot of ABA companies deal with a lot of turnover, of people being like, I can make another dollar an hour somewhere else.

SPEAKER_05: 26:37

Well, and then and then we went fee for service too, and I think that changed a lot of you know the culture.

SPEAKER_07: 26:42

You can make another dollar somewhere else, but you're not gonna have guaranteed hours, you're not gonna have any admin time and things like that. So think about it. But again, these sometimes are young professionals and they see I can make 26 instead of$25 an hour. And sometimes I would break it down and be like, look, you're actually gonna be making significantly less because it's not gonna be guaranteed and you're gonna have cancellations, you're gonna be driving, things like that. But like you said, some people just see that extra dollar. So you said the system is sick. Um what is your solution? You mentioned you just kind of got out of the system because you didn't see it as fixable. Is that the solution? Or is there a solution within the system?

SPEAKER_00: 27:18

No, well, and the thing is now I'm back in.

SPEAKER_07: 27:20

You're in, that's right.

SPEAKER_00: 27:22

I uh I just opened an AVA therapy company in Colorado. But the thing is, is the only reason that I did that, um, the person that I co-founded it with was a BCBA for me. She actually started as an RBT and became a BCBA under me when I worked in Florida, and then I brought her to a company in Georgia with me where I would had stayed on as the clinical director. Um, and she and I both want to fix the system. And so the only way I was willing to get back in again is if we were gonna do something totally different. Um, and we really want to prove that there's a different way to do things. So we're doing um low dose only, never above 20 hours. Uh, we're really going into um kids need to be kids, kids need to be with their families, kids need to do other things. And so we're trying out some policies uh that we're not sure how they're gonna go. Um, but we want them. One of the things is that we're gonna close one week every quarter, and our we're gonna pay our staff to be off, and our kids are gonna be off, and it coincides with kids' school calendars, and we're gonna encourage them to take a vacation with their family and their siblings and have a nice little reset for our staff. Um, there will be like a few hours of that first day that we're gonna do staff training, we're gonna capitalize on that. Now, of course, the con to that that we have to explain to staff is that means that when you take additional PTO, it's gonna be unpaid. Well, it's not gonna be PTO. When you take additional time off, it's gonna be unpaid. But you are getting almost four weeks off paid a year. You will be able to schedule vacations and stuff around this, but you know, you can have weddings and other things that are gonna come up. Um, and a really good sick policy because Colorado mandates a good SIG policy. We actually opened in Colorado, neither of us live there. We opened there for a reason because we felt that the culture there, the climate there, the laws there were very supportive what we were trying to do. We don't plan to ever have a clinic. We want to follow our kids where they naturally want to be. So from home to pre-K to school, um, we can get into the schools in Colorado a little easier, so we have heard. Um the parents that we've met with there are very open to this. We start all of our cases with parent consulting first. They have to go through parent consulting uh using the balance program, Dr. Hanley's balance program, they have to do that with us for about four weeks. I mean, it's not like a dedicated timeline, uh, but we want to see a certain amount of progression through that program with us before they're even paired with an RBT. We want to make sure we have parent buy-in. They know from the beginning that they're expected to be participating. We want them participating. They have a good relationship with their kid because the first thing we're worried about is connected relationships, and that's from Dr. Megan Viller um Dailyong. It's, you know, you need to have those connected relationships first, and that's what we're focused on. Um, and then kind of going through that and she saw our business plan.

SPEAKER_07: 30:07

You saw our business plan, Nicole, because that's like the exact thing that we're doing here.

SPEAKER_00: 30:12

I did. But she has a whole um a whole thing that she's put a ton of thought and research into, and she's able to use that on a small scale with some consulting that she does. But we're really trying to put it on like a big scale because we want to be able to show like this is a new way to think about things. This is a new way to do ABA and to show that there are outcomes. Because here's the thing is that it's gonna happen to us whether we're ready for it or not. Value-based care is coming. Um, and we've done that to ourselves by asking for 40 hours, no matter what, not showing outcomes, not having parent participation.

SPEAKER_02: 30:48

Yep.

SPEAKER_00: 30:48

Um, they gave us a lot of rope and we're hanging ourselves with it, and now we're gonna have to pay the price. And so I think before that happens to us, let's show, let's go back to research and show this can work, this can be effective, you can have good outcomes, and if not, happier outcomes for the staff and the clients.

SPEAKER_05: 31:04

You you mentioned that nice buzzword research. One of my favorite things uh in our last eight months of operations has been to get a call uh from a parent who who says, Oh, are you have a wait list? No, we're actually new, we can get you going right away. And uh, how many hours a week do you require? I'm sorry, excuse me. Well, we call somebody else somewhere else, and you have to be 25 hours in clinic or otherwise they don't offer you services. Uh that's not the way we work. Now, I know that if I went back to those people that were touting the 25 hours, I I know exactly the slew of articles that they would demonstrate to me uh to provide their evidence base. You picked 20. Tell us about that. Where where does that come from? It's exciting. So we want to know you're going the other direction, 20 or below. We like it. How did you guys come upon that uh decision?

SPEAKER_00: 31:57

Honestly, we just came upon that by thinking about a child and what their life normally looks like and what we thought could be a reasonable amount of time they could spend in therapy and still have a life.

SPEAKER_02: 32:07

Love it.

SPEAKER_00: 32:08

That's the best I got for you right now. You know, no, um, so we got to figure out this social validity thing, um, but we're really focused on the applied here. We like it. Like, are we gonna get what is effective for these families? Um, also, really long sessions can drag on. So, our thought process right now is like you're not gonna have session for more than two hours. So, if your kid is four hours a day, it's gonna be two hours, a break for an hour, and then another two hours. RVT has time to have lunch, maybe do some programming, kid has time to like nap or chill or just be with their family or whatever the case may be. Um, because you're not hitting it, if we're all realistic, you are not hitting it hard for six or eight hours in a session. Oh, it's rest absolutely not. So if you're in there for 40 hours, like you're not hitting it hard for that whole time.

SPEAKER_05: 32:53

I love what you just said too. Some we think of intensive services in terms of the span of hours, and we don't necessarily, it's hard to quantify, but how attentive are you for those two hours? I think a lot more intensity comes from that. And I speak personally now, knowing that we started purposefully with BCBA Direct to try and control cost uh and our investment. I'm on the order of 20 hours direct, you know, a week these days. Uh, and you learn a lot, you remember a lot when you're the one hands-on. Like there is no way there is a session that I do with uh a couple of siblings that spans four hours, but it's two boys, and uh for better or for worse, they've learned to work together. So we are together for four hours. It's downright exhausting. It is downright exhausting, and the parents will give me the same feedback. We love when you're here because then you leave them and they're so settled and they sleep so well. I'm like, yeah, me too. I'm exhausted. But I think that we forget about that, you know, rightfully so. You get into your pattern. I got into my pattern going in, doing supervision. You come in, you model a couple things, but you're not on for those two hours, you know.

SPEAKER_02: 33:59

Yep.

SPEAKER_05: 33:59

And I think once you remember that, you can then appreciate the RBT a whole lot more. The idea that we're gonna put you at a school site with a really intensive student for six hours, and then we're gonna expect that you could do a home session for two to three hours. Wow, that's that's a lot. That's a lot. So one thing that we're trying to do is trying to limit the day at six hours. Two hour sessions, trying without with rare exception, if um you're saying the RBT, right, to limit the day three three sessions, two hours apiece, six hours. If you absolutely want to help us out with more than six hours of day of direct, we'll give that to you. But we're trying to do the math so that the six hours accounts for their two hours of admin time for the day, whether they want to put it in office or do some materials or just go home and call it a day because they had two rough sessions or whatever it is. Um, I think that's really valuable. So I appreciate that years like we're going on a hunch, 20 hours because that's about the kid. And then on our end, we you know, we've been thinking about the RBT as well. And um, I I'm so grateful. It it was so daunting at first to start the experience and go back into being the sole direct you know delivery person. Uh, but I've learned so much and I've learned to appreciate the RBT position that much more.

SPEAKER_07: 35:12

I love the the 20 hours piece too. I don't think we have any clients that have more than 10 a week. Um yeah, we're we're low as well.

SPEAKER_05: 35:19

Um and eight's the highest right now.

SPEAKER_07: 35:22

Eight's probably the highest, yeah. Um and and that kind of came from our previous job too, where we had decapitated um funding. So we were never pressured to, you know, with free for service, a lot of times it's more hours, more hours, more hours. I've been in countless supervisor meetings, like I alluded to earlier, where it was never about how's this person doing clinically? What are we doing? It's when are they available? Okay, schedule hours then. And then what happens is it so we're taking these people are having problems with their daily routines. And we're coming in to work on the daily routines, except they can't have the daily routines because all of their time is session now. So we're changing their routine and then showing progress and then having them try to now fit that back into the naturalistic routine which we've taken from them. And I think what you're saying is let's fit into their routine, and that's what we want to do. If you're having a difficult time with dinner, maybe we'll be there at dinner, or maybe we'll teach you the strategies that you can implement at your dinner routine, but you don't have to have dinner at 3:30 because that's when the session is, or we're not gonna have a nine-hour session, so we can be there at 3.30, but it's some billable amount of hours. Like fit it into the family's routine. Now the question is, is that gonna be sustainable financially? Which we're gonna find out um because that's that's tricky, right? Block scheduling is really nice in terms of scheduling uh and predictability. Um, but there is that balance between scheduling and fitting into families.

SPEAKER_05: 36:40

The uh the odd uh correlation and proportionality between the availability of the family and the hours recommended. It's a real quandary. Wow, they happen to be the same. That's odd. How does that work? Did you actually assess, right? Now again, yeah, we trying to stay away from that. And I like the way uh one of our mantras has been uh, you know, we ABA fits into your lives as opposed to having you take out a second mortgage and pull your kid out of school because you got to make the clinic so many hours, or otherwise we don't serve you, and you're facing a six to eight month waiting list with the providers and the other symptoms to the illness that you were alluding to.

SPEAKER_00: 37:16

Yeah, and I mean, as a business owner, I know my businesses love the 40 hours because it's really easy to staff.

SPEAKER_05: 37:22

It's awesome. Are you kidding?

SPEAKER_00: 37:23

It's really easy to staff 40 hours. Okay, it is. Staffing gets way more complicated when you don't have 40 hours to work.

SPEAKER_01: 37:30

Of course.

SPEAKER_00: 37:31

Um, but you know, there are businesses that blatantly uh say, all right, you are going to school now, so we don't serve you anymore. Because if you need less than 40 hours, we don't do that. And of course they'll try to be like, oh, it's not like you know, they'll try to have some like legitimate reason for why that is, but we all know why that is because it's a lot more complicated to staff and schedule kids that are not just there 40 hours a week. And so basically they're like, Well, we only do early intervention, so now we need to pass you on to someone else because we, you know, don't know how to work with older kids. You know, you just don't want to work with older kids. And then now older kids are piling and piling and piling up and like you can't take all afternoon kits, no matter how much you want to. I mean, that's just not gonna work for a business unless you have all part-time staff and you only want to work between the hours of like five to whatever. So there has to be some balance that you have to find somewhere to make the business side of it work too. But you really have to be thoughtful about how you're doing that. And to me, like just saying everyone needs to have 40 hours is lazy. I'm saying that's yeah.

SPEAKER_07: 38:36

And that goes back to your question you talked about earlier about the private equity piece and never hearing a good story about private equity, um, except for the owners that sell or the private equity that comes in and tells you how great they're gonna be. Um, it's just those differing motives, right? That that clinical piece, like you were talking about how much easier it is to schedule 40 hours, and that's what um private equity will do. They'll just look at it from that that end. And I don't think they're necessarily inherently opposed to private equity in clinic, but their their motives are different. Like the company that we just left that sold private equity came in and was frank and said, we're gonna try to sell this in five years. And their goal is to try to make it look as good as on paper in five years so they can turn around and sell it. Now, does that mean you can do clinic, good clinical service? No, not necessarily, but all of the meetings are gonna be, and the focus is gonna be on hitting those metrics so that it looks good in five years, and you can sell it and turn it into a profit. And I think that is um, while it's not necessarily diametrically opposed, definitely the motives are different and lead to what you were just talking about, Nicole.

SPEAKER_00: 39:40

Yeah, and I mean the the financial part of it is not the only reason why this system is sick, as I say. The other one is we've got too many new BCBAs that are not being trained by other people. It's like the blind leaning the blind, right? I mean, like you could be a BCDA for like two years and now you're gonna be a clinical director. And it's gonna be now your job, who has never had any experience with leadership, running anything, anything else, to now train a new BCBA that literally just passed their exam yesterday. And so you're trying to help each other out, and you don't neither of you really knows what you're doing. There's not enough seasoned people to actually train you. They're just you're trying to fill positions. It's like we've got to have more BCBAs, we have wait lists, we want to serve people, and I get that. I understand that that's what we want to do, but we can only do so much. We need to have a little bit of quality control here. Like, I don't think you should be a clinical director when you've only been a BCBA for a couple of years and you have very little experience doing even like client services at this point, and now. When you bring in like needing to have leadership skills, coaching skills, mentoring skills, training skills, that's a whole different skill set. Um ultimately you should still think about it like a behavior analyst, which is usually when I coach people, I say things like, would you blame your client if they weren't learning? Then why are you blaming your staff?

SPEAKER_01: 41:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 41:01

You trained them. You taught them or you did not train them properly. So look at your staff the way you would look at a client. You're not going to blame a client for not learning. Don't blame your staff for not learning. Did you give them the supports that they need? Did you do you know training with them? But we're very quick to say like the staff are just lazy or you know, whatever. And that's not the case.

SPEAKER_07: 41:22

Um anything you wanted to say on that, Mike?

SPEAKER_05: 41:25

I know that is uh um yeah, one of one of my more recent experiences was uh just had gotten really sour, and I I felt very um a lot of empathy actually for the the business owner because it you know he that person did have this impression that these RBTs were out to to to get them and to ruin the business and they always wanted to take time off and they're lazy, and it's like man, that's just that that's gotta be a bad situation to be in. If you feel like that about your staff, you know, how how do you sit in front of them at meetings and and provide this now praise? Is that empty? I don't know. It just felt so like such a bad place to be in. And and I and again, I I understood the quandary that that that they were in and uh understood the pitfalls that they created, and and you know, I we hope to do better. So I I don't mean to be overly critical as much as and Dan had to nudge me there because I we were just in that situation where you know we'd be in these directors' meetings and it was like, man, you really feel like your staff is out to get you.

SPEAKER_04: 42:28

That's that's unfortunate. I don't know what to tell you. Like they're actually really good people and they're working really hard, I gotta tell you. You know.

SPEAKER_00: 42:35

Yeah, I mean, everyone I coach is to go to every situation with curiosity. So if you have a staff that's frequently late, uh, did you ask them why? You know, do you have them scheduled super early in the morning and they're commuting in from like a 50 minutes away or something like that, and they always hit traffic? Is there something we could do? Can we start their session a little bit later instead of assuming that this is their fault? You know, could we do like a quick little modification like that? Like if they're out of uniform, could we ask them, hey, I noticed you're out of uniform, what's going on? And they're like, oh, my washer broke. And then that gives them an opportunity to say, you know what, next time your washer breaks, if you could just come up to me and be like, hey, I know I'm out of uniform, but my washer broke, that little bit of communication is gonna save us both a lot in the long run. And you're just like, hey, no problem. Washers break, be in uniform next time. Not a big deal. Instead of just assuming like that person just doesn't want to be in uniform, they just don't care.

SPEAKER_07: 43:29

Well, do you know what the solution was at at the meetings? Um this this always made us laugh, but yeah, we we had some RVTs that were um they were canceling a lot. And you know what the solution was? You want to take a guess, Nicole?

SPEAKER_00: 43:42

Uh was it was it punishment? Was it punitive?

SPEAKER_07: 43:45

It was punitive, right? We gotta write them up. We gotta write them up and let them know if they don't start making their sessions, then we're gonna uh suspend them or cancel them. And it's like, okay, yeah, that's a that's it. So they're already overworked, and you sitting down and talking about how you're gonna punish them, and that that's gonna get it done. Okay, yeah. I remember like uh a lot of us were kind of looking at each other like, what are we behavior analysts around this table?

SPEAKER_04: 44:10

Or what do we do we have any better ideas?

SPEAKER_07: 44:12

Because if I don't like something, punishing me is gonna make me like it more. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 44:18

Yeah. I mean, sometimes you get cancellations. I've had, you know, this happen with business consultants uh business clients of mine, and they're like, Well, the staff is always canceling on like Friday afternoons, and so it's like this automatic thing, like they're probably just going on vacation. I said, Who's their client on Friday afternoons? Oh, it's so and so. Have you ever asked them if they need extra support with that case? Maybe there's something particularly challenging about that case, and they have not felt comfortable yet coming to you to say, Hey, I'm not sure what I'm doing with this case, or I need extra support. And so instead they're just avoiding it by canceling. And it has nothing to do with it being the weekend. It has everything to do with that case. Oh, you know what? I never thought about that. I'm like, let's think about that. Maybe that's what's happening. Or maybe have not created a culture of safety, of psychological safety, and they don't feel comfortable coming to you for help. And that's a you problem that you're gonna have to work on. But let's start with going to them and being like, hey, you know, can I give you some extra supervision? Is there anything going on with that case? Is it challenging? Like, how's the program going for you?

SPEAKER_07: 45:17

Yeah, I love that. And also, or the supervisor never goes out and supports them on the Friday session as well, and then they just complain about the staff canceling all the time. But it's like, how what you've also never gone out on the Friday session.

SPEAKER_05: 45:29

Well, I've got to start my weekend.

SPEAKER_00: 45:32

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_05: 45:33

The BCBA's gonna start their weekend. What's the problem here? What do you mean? That lazy RBT's canceling.

SPEAKER_07: 45:38

It made me think about it too, um, when you were talking about so the economics thing, but the other thing that's thick about the BCBA's um, you know, starting and clinical directors and and things like that um within two years' experience, that a lot of times, again, goes back to the meetings and the support that they're getting. Are the BCBAs from the higher-ups getting support about clinical matters or are they getting support about how to meet your hours? Because at the end of the day, what's gonna flag somebody to come in and get a meeting? Is it them not meeting their hours or some clinical issues? And at least in my experience, a lot of companies aren't really gonna know the if the BCABA or the BCBA is providing a good clinical service unless it gets really bad and a parent calls and complains, they're not gonna know. So they're just gonna assume everything's fine. Now the higher-ups will know if they're not meeting their hours. So all the meetings will be about that. Um, and additionally, you know, sometimes a lot of the bigger companies they'll have, what was it, the DECWA, the director of quality assurance? Um, so they'll have quality assurance managers, but the quality assurance is only in congruence to the insurance like mandates of how the session should be run. So are you writing your goals in the way the insurance wants you to write your goals? Are you doing it in congruence with that, which is important? Absolutely. Gotta pass an audit. I'm not saying that's not important. And there's, I've actually learned a lot now working with insurances. Uh, the previous company that Mike and I talked about, we had a very lenient insurance um that really didn't like overlook our goals too much. And we were very ethical in the way we wrote them, and now we've come into the real world where insurances are very nitpicky, and I've actually learned a lot, and there's a lot of good things there. But the point being, either they're getting oversight on the hours piece or they're getting oversight on the quality, but only in relationship to how it will fill an insurance audit. Never really like, how's the actual quality? Is this kid having a good time? Are you, if you're doing a scent, are you doing that? Are you running the sessions the way you want them to run? Is it functional? Is it productive? Like that stuff is just not being looked over at all in my experience, and what I'm hearing. Speaking of what you're doing.

SPEAKER_00: 47:40

Part of the problem with that is that they call them a clinical director, but what they really are is an operations director. And they those are two separate positions.

SPEAKER_05: 47:47

Director of the clinic. Clinical director. Not a clinical director. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 47:52

Right. Clinical director means I'm overseeing the clinical work that's going on here. I am learning best practices, and I am telling those best practices to my staff. I'm making sure that we're always keeping up with those kinds of things. Um, operations director is monitoring hours, compliance, all that kind of stuff. But what they try to do is make those one position. And on top of that, you're also going to carry a caseload. Because apparently you can do all those things.

SPEAKER_07: 48:20

Yeah, I really like that delineation. Go ahead. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 48:23

That's that's an excellent point.

SPEAKER_00: 48:25

Um, I think it should be illegal for a clinical director to carry a caseload. I really do. I understand why people do it. They want to make they want them to pay for themselves a little bit, and I get that. But if you are a good clinical director, you don't have time to carry a caseload, not well.

SPEAKER_05: 48:39

My hope in some future, I have a caseload now, but in some future, my hope is to be doing about four hours a day of direct client contact because I'm overseeing existing cases on our roster in general. That is really my vision to one day say, I'm gonna be in the office four hours a day doing this, that, or the other in development, and then at least four hours a day I'm out supporting whether it's a BCBA or an RBT because something. The idea is yes, I am billable to use that dirty word directly. But I I really like the way you put that. Are you overseeing something? Are you really just now siloed into this list of ten clients that that yeah, you're probably not giving your all to because you're spread rather thin. Uh, Nicole, have we had a chance to talk about rooted enough? I want to make sure that we give you a chance to so you talked about your new practice and then give you a chance to talk about the work you do with Rooted and and your vision there. You're uh a chief visionary officer. Did I get that right? That's quite a title.

SPEAKER_00: 49:43

Yes.

SPEAKER_05: 49:43

Um tell us about that, please, before we uh we end today.

SPEAKER_00: 49:47

Um yeah, I think the biggest thing is I am trying to focus on how do we branch out, how do we get to other places. That's ultimately what I want. I want to get back to what I consider the old days of ABA when we just served people, we made life better, um, and we weren't siloed into autism therapy. Uh I think one of the things that's very important to that is supervision. Um, my supervision program is about focusing outside of ASD. So all the like scenarios, cases, everything we talk about is across the gamut. I will give you cases that are like in gerontology, forensics, clinical, in a school, with pets, whatever, because to me, the way that you build fluency with concepts is you can apply them in a lot of different ways.

SPEAKER_02: 50:34

I love that.

SPEAKER_00: 50:34

Um, and I feel like that's gonna make you prepared to take the exam and be a good behavior analyst. Also, people that are in our supervision program, I expect them to have a kind of like a dream, a passion, something that they're wanting to do for the field. Like they I want them thinking about like ultimately what impression am I trying to leave, what am I trying to bring to the science? And so the a lot of the people I work with are looking to expand outside of ASD. And I want people to understand that you don't have to ever be an RBT and you can get supervision and you can become a BCBA. Um, people think you have to be working as an RBT to have a client or to get those kind of hours or whatever, and you don't. Um, you never need to do that. You never need to set foot in there if that's not where you want to be. Um, I have a theory that even though 70% of behavior analysts work in ASD, only about 50% of those people actually want to be there. And I did like a little informal poll on LinkedIn and it was very small sample size, but the numbers show to be about that. People are trapped there because they think that's where they need to be. And it's not the best for the clients either if you're in a field that you're not comfortable in or that you're not happy with, right? Because your satisfaction as a is not going to be great. Um, so I'm really trying to like push that and then push how do we get into these other, you know, areas, how do how do we like, you know, make ourselves available in these other areas. For me personally, the areas that I want to apply ABA is with human trafficking, domestic violence, um, and kind of like clinical decision making in the courts as far as how uh we decide what programs we're gonna put people in that are charged with domestic violence, um, how we can educate the community on identifying human trafficking, what do we do to help those people? And so those are kind of some of the things that I'm working on kind of like privately. No one's paying me to do that. I don't just have like some great gig with someone. I have to do the same things that other people are gonna have to do that want to figure out how to go other places, is you've got to network, you've got to connect with other people, you have to figure out what we can bring to those areas. Um that's what I really want to do.

SPEAKER_07: 52:42

Can you speak to that a little bit, Nicole? That's really interesting. You said domestic violence and human trafficking. Like, how how do you anticipate bringing ABA into that?

SPEAKER_00: 52:51

So I think if you think about like Milton Berger's studies with like gun safety and like kidnapping and stuff like that, um, we kind of use that same philosophy, like that kind of BST training to get people to identify trafficking victims. So they are starting to do that a little bit more. And in fact, there are some states where the board um to become a licensed baby analyst actually requires you to take a human trafficking education class because of the um the vision that it falls under if it falls under like psychology or something like that. So that's great. But I think it's really like getting out there, and a lot of things are gonna come from grant money and stuff like that. They really are. You've got to have you've gotta get a grant, you gotta show that you have a program that's worth having, and then you can get more dollars. I mean, that's really how you like kind of get some of these things funded. Um, but showing that we could train people that work in hotels, restaurants, hospitals, things like that to identify victims of human trafficking. Um, and then what do we do once we've identified them? So, like getting them, you know, in contact with other agencies and stuff that can help figure out how to give some assistance to these people. Um and then with domestic violence, it's really my husband is uh is a clerk in the in the court system right now, and so I get to hear a lot about um how decisions are made. And there are sentencing guidelines, but that's all they are, they're guidelines. Um, and so I like the idea of being able to actually say, doing like a more formal risk assessment and saying, what supports does this person have? What is their offense history? Um, and then what do we think would actually be an appropriate sentence for that? Um and I think it's not necessarily immediately incarceration. I think it's like programs, and there is a program that a lot of them have to take if they're like first-time offenders in domestic violence, but we have no measure, like no outcome measure. Like, is that effective? Is that not effective? What even is that course? And so it's you start with basic things like that, like, hey, how about if I come? Can I review your course? Could I give you some tips on how we can make this a better course? Could we start tracking outcomes data? Can we see what actually follow, you know, follows some of these people and figure that out? And so I'm kind of starting with a little bit of that right now. I got um a ton of data from the court system here sent to me on all of the domestic violence cases, human trafficking cases, sex offense cases in the past. I think I had them send me like the past 10 years or something. It took them a while to get all that together. So I'm gonna sort through and filter all that stuff, and then I have to work with the you know legal system or the you know police department and work with those units and try to figure out like what are these um, what do these people look like, what are these offenders look like, and try to get some profiles of them to dig together. Um, but part of the way that I kind of got to doing that is one, having a husband that works in the court system. And also he and I um went and did a um a program where you could, as a community member, you could um work with the the police department as like a citizen police academy and learn all about the divisions and stuff like that. And then we register as volunteers with the police department. So that gets me, I start getting embedded a little bit where I can again make some friends, get to know some people, figure out how the system works. Um, I know, for example, that our um SDU unit here, well, everything is completely understaffed in law enforcement right now for a lot of reasons. There's a lot of social reasons why that's happening. Um, but here, one I think one of the biggest facts I heard when I went through the Cis in Police Academy that really upset me is that the Kentucky Derby is one of the largest events that human trafficking occurs at in Louisville. And because we are so short staffed, um, the SDU detectives, instead of going out and finding these victims that they know are there and they have they have ways to identify them, they're actually put on traffic duty.

SPEAKER_02: 56:43

Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 56:44

Because traffic is so bad and they and they're so understaffed that they have to do that. They basically just have to turn a blind eye to the trafficking they know is happening in our city every year during this event so that they can go do traffic duty.

SPEAKER_07: 56:58

That's a great use of resources.

SPEAKER_00: 56:59

I yeah, and I heard that, and I'm like, one of the first things I'm thinking of is how do we get more, you know, because they there are citizen um school, you know, there are like citizen safety officers kind of thing, you know, we have like that safety officer program that helps with like conducting traffic at schools and things like that. How do we beef up that program and get them at the derby directing traffic so that our SDU officers can actually be catching traffickers? Um, so it's looking at things like that and looking at systems and figuring out where are the systems broken and how can we get in and fix them. Um, so when people say I'm interested in forensic ADA, I'm like, which part? What? You need to get more specific because that's very general.

SPEAKER_05: 57:39

The domestic violence piece um, I think is a very important topic that is either highly sensationalized or just doesn't get spoken about enough in serious enough tones. I'm really glad you're looking into that. I had a chance to uh, in terms of the courses, the idea of these court-mandated anger management situations, I think there's a lot of help uh to be lent there. Um I think a lot of these things are checkboxes. So you you go through it because you're being told to do it, and you go sit there, and even the people that are delivering these are probably very privy to that. You're making the money, you know, you know, it's a checkbox. You don't care what happens after that. The other piece that I'll mention that we're looking into uh prospectively that I also think needs a lot of help within a similar vein there, uh domestic violence in family courts seem to be uh unfortunately very synonymous. Uh supervised visitation for parents is something that is exorbitantly priced and as far as I understand, pretty darn useless in terms of actually teaching a parent who's being supervised how to remedy whatever issues have come up, how to work with the other parent to maybe uh not interpret certain parenting you know situations in certain ways that are now detrimental or advantageous given the case. There's a lot of messiness to be done within family courts and divorce, domestic violence, supervised visitation. I think there's a lot of help to be lent there, and I think that we're the people that could do it in terms of parent education, uh really looking at systems, looking at variables. So really, really glad that you're delving into that work of uh forensic ABA, if you will. Um, as we thought might be the case, two hours have come and gone. Here we are. Um anything we didn't cover that you want to put out there? Certainly tell people where to find you as we wrap up here so that they know uh how to tap into your excellent resources and understand, uh get a better grip of the work that you're uh doing ongoing.

SPEAKER_00: 59:39

Yeah, I mean, the one last plug I'd like to say is that I think Dr. Scott might have mentioned this when he was on, but we do have a new group that we have developed. Uh we have a name now, so we're the Society for the Expansion of Behavior Analysis. I'm the executive vice president. Um, and so we are working to try to all come together and make a way to branch out outside of autism. And we are actively looking for people that want to get involved with that. They're welcome to reach out to me and I will get them hooked up with when we have our meetings. Um, but you can find me on LinkedIn, pretty active on there, and then on Instagram um at rooted consultation. Um so you're welcome to follow me in either of those places. And I will always just be running my mouth trying to advocate for people to break out of autism. But if you're gonna be in autism, make it better.

SPEAKER_05: 1:00:26

Quick uh quick idea that I know we had. I think we kicked it around with Dr. Scott and then Suzanne as well. But maybe we host one of your guys' meetings um for the podcast if you think that would be a good way to disseminate that disseminate that information. And we're we're We're game to help. We're very interested in the work that you guys are doing to move that forward. Again, we're looking at other areas that that might be able to utilize our content expertise. And I think it's an important uh theme just to diversify our knowledge, our knowledge base, and more importantly, our reach. I think so. Thank you so much for all the work you've done. I'd like to end up with a quick little synopsis of all the gems you left us with and then our tagline. So what I've got today is you don't have to work with ASD to do ABA. Don't blame your staff. They're not lazy. Let kids be kids and always analyze responsibly. Cheers, Nicole. Thank you so much for your time. It's been a great, great conversation. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:22

Thank you, guys. Always analyze responsibly.

SPEAKER_03: 1:01:26

ABA on top is recorded live and unfiltered. We're done for today. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. See you next time.