Monday-Friday from 9.00 AM to 5.00 PM
5425 Golden Gate Pkwy, Suite 7. Naples, FL 34116
Our practice counts with a team of dedicated professionals sharing a common goal which is to provide outstanding behavioral and psychological services to our most vulnerable community members in Southwest Florida.
To start the process, a referral to ABA must be received by the office. Your child might be referred by his treating pediatrician. The child must have been evaluated by a licensed psychologist, psychiatrist, neurologist, or developmental pediatrician. This documentation will prove that the child needs behavior therapy and will be submitted to the insurance. If unsure about your documents, please contact us. We will review the documentation you have and provide applicable guidance.
Yes. Most insurance companies only require a one in a lifetime evaluation. Still, you will need to provide current medical documentation indicating that the problem(s) persist, and your child engages in challenging behaviors that warrant behavior therapy treatment.
If your child has not been evaluated, you can ask your pediatrician to be referred to a neurologist, psychologist, psychiatrist, or developmental pediatrician for an evaluation. These professionals will conduct the appropriate testing and will arrive to the most appropriate diagnosis that will help connect with appropriate treatment choices.
Once the documents are submitted to the insurance, the insurance will review them and if medical necessity is demonstrated, we will receive an approval for an evaluation. During the evaluation a behavior analyst will gather the necessary information using different assessment tools. Your main concerns regarding your child’s behaviors and skills needed to be established will be addressed. The analyst will write a plan tailored to your child’s difficulties, developmental, and adaptive needs and will recommend treatment dosage. Once the behavior plan is approved, services will start.
Behavior therapy is an intensive treatment. Behavior therapy is a systematic approach that uses evidenced-based principles to modify behavior. This treatment is highly effective in bringing meaningful and socially significant change. Early intervention and consistency are critical. Service hours range from 10 to 25 weekly hours on average, with some cases requiring more than 30 hours per week, depending on child’s severity and need of intensive care. High risk behaviors such as elopement, food refusal, self injurious behaviors, highly aggressive behaviors, or property destruction may require more hours of therapy to address these difficulties.
Caregiver training is an essential component for successful therapy. Analysts will train parents on the interventions that better modify behavior, will educate on behavioral principles, and will model proper treatment techniques. It is the goal of therapy to train caregivers so that they can better take care of the child once therapy ends. Those skills that are practiced during therapy sessions and parent training need to be generalized to different settings and in interactions with different people. Parents can successfully learn and implement skills and strategies that will bring marked improvement in children’s behaviors.
We provide these services at home, school, daycares, and community settings. It has been demonstrated that behavior is better modified when is treated where the behavior occurs. This gives the opportunity to apply the right interventions when the problem behavior occurs, address environmental factors playing a role in the display of behaviors, as well as capitalizing in learning opportunities that we find in our environment.
Our practice actively collaborates with the referring providers and other clinicians if needed. After obtaining the required consents, referring clinicians will receive periodic updates on the child’s progress to better plan treatment.
