Supervisors can support staff in learning how to teach meaningful skills to their clients. They can do this in two main ways. Formal structured teaching in a classroom or training modules, on the job and face-to-face. They can also provide more informal daily activities that are learning situations to help staff gain an idea of how to teach. Some common problems may arise in which a supervisor may need to further train their staff how to improve their own proficiency, they can do this by checking in often for additional teaching moments. While a supervisor is training staff how to teach meaningful skills they should allow the staff to develop their own individualized plan for teaching their client’s skills. Then as the plan unfolds and there are openings for the supervisor to offer support they can offer ongoing supervision, monitoring, and support like correction, if needed. As long as the proof is showing that the staff is teaching their client’s well, the supervisor will recognize that the client is developing the skills they should. The skills would include two areas; Routine, or natural activities and the ability to repeat those tasks. If the client shows difficulty repeating tasks then another form of support can come from the supervisor which may include naturalistic, formal modeling or using group times to interact as staff with supervisor and model the examples of behavior for the staff to refresh and learn more. These forms of teaching supervision put the power to create a teaching plan into the hands of staff, keep them engaged and also keep them aware of their own development and progress as their client’s show the proof that they are successful. To prevent and reduce non-work behaviors situationally, non-work behavior may need an intervention which requires supervisor action. When that happens, the supervisor can focus on the activities that should be occurring, not those that shouldn’t. This indirect approach works well for staff morale and also gets the point across that there is work to prioritize. Sometimes the non-work behaviors are subtle, or minor and just need to be monitored in an indirect supervision approach. In that case, deterrents can help. Deterrents such as work schedules, the supervisor’s presence, monitoring, and feedback (redirecting focus) are subtle and effective enough to keep staff on track. Flexibility on the agency and supervisor’s part is important here too. There should be some room for creating time specifically for nonwork activities to fulfill staff enjoyment or on strenuous days, creating downtime from physically straining activities, such as hot days, cold days or physically challenging activities like a lot of mobility aid or cleaning. Utilizing formal agency, legal breaktime is essential, with additional breaks using the supervisor’s best professional judgement and staff voting. Lastly, it's important for the supervisor to remember that there is always a non-work behavior ratio every day. I hope the supervisor and staff can come up with a consensus as to how much is too much, making sure duties are getting done and done well.



Best Practice for Supervision of Counselors

Behavior analysts supervise only within defined competencies. They provide supervisory activities such as clinical, teaching, research, and are restricted to their competencies. There is no requirement for non-discriminatory interactions. Behavior analysts who are not competent should make referrals, or get additional training or consultation. 
The pupose of this is to protect consumers and supervisees.

University of Wisconsin - Superior

Those who practice ABA are considerably less qualified than other therapists, as they are not required to take any classes on autism or receive masters or PhD credentials. This is a considerable source of controversy and critics feel that ABA should require more qualifications. 


Perceived Lack of Training for ABA Therapists

Sandoval-Norton, A. H., Shkedy, G., & Shkedy, D. (2021). Long-term ABA therapy is abusive: A response to Gorycki, Ruppel, and Zane. Advances in Neurodevelopmental Disorders, 5(2), 126-134.

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