Chapter Spotlight: ABA Australia
Photo by Catarina Sousa from Pexels.
“We are looking forward to the time when our members can come together again.”
Alexandra brown
ABA Australia continues to develop. During this challenging year, our membership base has remained stable, but we are pleased that BCBA numbers continue to increase.
Our fifth annual 2-day conference in Sydney (July 2020) was cancelled due to Covid-19 restrictions. For the first time ever, we will be offering a virtual conference for 2021. Some members have made up for the lack of social contact by running and attending social reading nights. These have been via telehealth platforms or face-to-face, depending on the restrictions at the time. We are looking forward to the time when our members can come together again.
As always, our various committees have continued to work toward increased recognition of behaviour analytic services and BCBAs; however, our priorities have now shifted toward the development of an Australian Regulatory Board. Examples of tasks involved in this include developing a business plan, standards of practice, and a code of ethics.
After a long and nervous wait, we were ecstatic to find out that our application to continue to use the BACB exam in Australia had been approved. This means that Australians can continue to sit the BACB exam after 31 December 2022. This takes a monumental weight from our list of self-regulation tasks.
ABA Australia had a poster at ABAIs second Virtual Expo in May 2021. We loved connecting, in an albeit different way, with behaviour analysts from around the world. As always, ABAIs support for international chapters at the Affiliate Chapter Training was also very much appreciated by our attending board members. Self-regulation was a hot topic.
As we look forward to the next year, we will continue to work toward our enormous, but exciting, goals.
