I tried ALP with a big dose of hesitation. Many in the adult autistic community state that ABA is abusive, and I regret not trusting them and my own gut on this. This company not only employs terrible tactics, but preys on special needs families with extra charges and hidden costs. The only good part of this story is that we pulled out as quickly as we did.
First off, after months of waiting for an RBT match, I was told that 1) they could not guarantee that the RBT had any experience working with children ; 2) that the RBT had any knowledge of sensory needs related to autism; and 3) they could not disclose my RBT's vaccination status "due to HIPAA." (Sidenote: I'm in the medical /public health field and vaccination disclosure is absolutely NOT a HIPAA violation. And this was important to us since our child is too young to be vaccinated against COVID.) I should've taken these red flags and run, but we were soon matched with an RBT who seemed decent enough. She had a masters in psychology and was passionately pro-vaccine. So I thought everything might be ok.
There was nothing I could say against her. She was kind and caring, and most importantly, did not apply the outwardly abusive ABA practices I had feared. I genuinely liked her. Just as she had started to establish rapport with my son (which took a few weeks), though, I suddenly received a cryptic message from our BCBA that she was no longer with the company. She was just... Gone. Overnight. We were back to square one, and I wondered what we had accomplished over the previous few weeks. I was told we were back on a months-long waiting list for another RBT whose qualifications would never come under serious scrutiny. I realized that our first match was probably an odd stroke of luck, and at this point, we terminated services.
Our BCBA joined the sessions virtually to "supervise" a few times, a cost that (I assumed) was covered by my insurance, as ABA has traditionally been applied by BCBAs. My spidey senses went off during these sessions. Discussions centered solely around "compliance," not the well-being of my son. When he got upset, I was instructed to ignore him and withhold affection (which I will NEVER do). There was no concern for his sensory processing differences or his needs. Just strict behavioral compliance. After our last session, I was honestly near tears. I knew nothing we were experiencing was right.
We were charged over $60 extra for each of these sessions, which was not disclosed in the parent handbook they provided.
On the topic of extra charges, we also had a problem with the functional behavioral assessment. I've had two identical charges on my billing statement for our FBA (with identical billing codes). We have one child, so clearly, we received only one FBA. I emailed the compliance department about this, and they claim that the two identical FBA charges are legitimate since one is for the assessment and another is for the report write-up. What? When you need a CT scan, you don't get charged 2 CT scans to enable the radiologist to write up your report. This seemed incredibly disingenuous to me.
One of the challenging things about parenting an autistic child is sorting through the providers who driven by their passion to help children vs those who are just part of the huge "autism industrial complex." Unfortunately, ALP is the latter. We've since found truly caring providers through the Floortime community, and the care my son is receiving is incredible. Know your people. Build a good team. Make sure ALP is not a part of it. read more