Recently, this Wall Street Journal article was posted to social media trying to expose Medicaid fraud by ABA facilities. It doesn’t surprise me. The centers seem to have a ton of money, and there are a ton of them too. Every time I log into indeed to just browse, another ABA center “behavioral technician” job pops up on my suggestions. I always click the thumbs down for “this is a bad match.” Indeed doesn’t get the hint.
Here is a list of books I’m in the middle of reading about this issue:
The Autism Industrial Complex by Dr. Alicia Broderick. Dr. Broderick also talks about this issue on a couple podcast episodes here, and here
A book I have but haven’t looked at yet is The Gold Standard Fallacy of ABA by Julie Roberts. She’s hard to find any more info on without coming upon tons of links to Julia Roberts.
TikTok content creators I like:
Songbird Speech (an adult with autism and a speech language pathologist)
Jean (autistic adult, educator with a doctorate in education)
They both do a lot of talking about how communication isn’t behavioral. This is one of the things “wrong” that I couldn’t put my finger on when I attempted to train to be an RBT. Communication is innate, and it’s not true communication when it’s treated as a behavior. Maybe once I learn more, I’ll get into it more.
YouTube links:
Paige Layale’s video on her own childhood ABA experience. Some people on Reddit say that about half of what she says is spot on and half is her projecting, but to me, if she’s been in therapy her whole life, then she should know when she’s projecting and not do it in a YouTube video. 🤷🏻♀️ Because of that, I give her the benefit of the doubt.
How to advocate against ABA without losing your mind. They do a very good job explaining a lot of things, as well as understanding many aspects of “the other side of it.”
I think that’s all for now. More later. I re-watched and re-listened to all of that and most of the TikTok’s before linking. You can also fall down the rabbit hole on Reddit by searching for ABA SLP. One might ask, well what would the alternative be? The alternative would be speech and occupational therapy, along with pouring some of the billions from that Medicaid fraud into special education and parent education. 🫶🏼
No comments:
Post a Comment