Seal Beach, CA (July 20, 2020) – The Autism Partnership Foundation (APF) launched a FREE 40-Hour Registered Behavior Technician (RBT) training program on March 2, 2020. This free training eliminates the cost barrier for parents and service providers. It provides a much-needed high quality option at a time when COVID-19 has placed a tremendous burden on families with children with ASD and has strained the resources of school districts and treatment agencies. Students are receiving reduced services, parents without training have had to assume the role of providing life-changing intervention, and professionals are unable to fulfill their passion for teaching their students. APF’s free RBT training has helped fill some of the void. Parents and professionals are acquiring the necessary skills for children to have more positive educational experiences with better-trained teachers and better-prepared parents.
There is an immense need for progressive training, high level expertise, and monitoring of quality in the field of applied behavior analysis. As of April 1, 2020, there were 71,875 certified RBTs worldwide. In just four months, more people have registered for the APF course than there are RBTs in the world. RBT training courses had proliferated as a profit-making venture within many organizations that promoted a cookbook approach to autism treatment. The APF online course is designed to help alleviate the short supply of trained professionals and raise that standard for quality training and intervention, which is exactly the mission of the nonprofit foundation, according to Dr. Ron Leaf, APF Co-Founder and Progressive ABA pioneer. “Tragically, there is an extreme shortage of professionals trained in Quality ABA,” said Leaf. “It has been our passion to increase access to quality training in Progressive ABA.”
The need for effective and accessible treatment is now greater than ever. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is the fastest growing developmental disorder in the United States, with 1 in 54 children affected by ASD. Decades of research in peer-reviewed journals shows that the lives of children diagnosed with ASD can be greatly enhanced with quality behavioral intervention. However, that intervention is out of reach for so many children and their families.
“At APF, we met a group of individuals and professionals who had the same expectations of our boys as we did. It was intensive, not formulaic, and it required a higher level of training than what’s typically available,” said Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber. “We were lucky to have access to high quality intervention for our boys, but most don’t – and far too many parents don’t even know these options are available. With the increasing rate of ASD, we have to develop the artisans in this area, we have to start somewhere and build it up, and one of the places we decided to begin is at the entry level with a high quality, free RBT training course.”
To learn more about the RBT Training, please visit https://bit.ly/APF-RBT.
About the Autism Partnership Foundation: The Autism Partnership Foundation is a public, non-profit organization. Founded in 1994, the goal of the foundation is to train and educate professionals in advancing the effective methodology and behavioral analytic treatment using the intervention method to improve the outcome of those diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The vision of the foundation includes a world where all individuals with autism reach their fullest potential while being granted access to the proper quality care to succeed. The APF Academy was created to promote the accessible and effective behavioral treatment for ASD while training the next generation of professionals, educating those impacted by it, observing supportive information, and advancing the scientific quality of ABA.
To learn more about the Autism Partnership Foundation, visit www.autismparternshipfoundation.org or email Htavakol@autismpartnershipfoundation.org
