ABA Switzerland

By Silja Wirth, Charlotte Escané, & Erika Glaus

This year, ABA Switzerland continued to offer webinars with CEUs opportunities. We welcomed Nicole Pfaller-Sadovky, she introduced her work with dogs and training of dog caregivers. Shane Spiker presented his work with adults. This presentation was followed by Kimberly Maich and Carmen Hall who also gave us an insight into their work with adults with autism. They showed many examples of their current practice. Kelsey Ruppel presented, “Balance Program: A Parent-Professional Collaborative Approach to Emerging Problem Behavior.” She introduced the participants to this great training model tailored for parents. We also welcomed Eric Larsson back for another webinar to present on the topic of cognitive behavior therapy for anxiety and depression.

Another area of focus this year has been to start building ABA Switzerland’s future approval of master’s course sequences in ABA. The chapter will replicate the ABAI course sequence approbation for now. At the same time, thanks to Neil Martin’s support, we helped in the creation of the first master program in ABA here in Switzerland. Courses will be given in French, by BCBAs working in the field of behavior analysis for more than five consecutive years.

We continued to seek our neighboring countries’ feedback, specifically the French community via ONPAC (Organisation Nationale des Professionnels en Analyse du Comportement). We also developed a stronger collaboration with the ABA chapters in Italy to establish a foundation for future joint projects.

ABA Switzerland joined EuroBa’s Advisory Group as the representative for Switzerland. There have been two meetings with representatives from many European countries. We discussed the situation in Europe and got the opportunity to give feedback to the EuroBa competence list for entry-level Behavior Technicians. The advisory group also developed a paper that describes the current situation in Europe which is in the process of submitting for publication.

As we all know, social media has become an important part of any organization’s communication. ABA Switzerland needs to evolve in that domain! For that matter, one volunteer offered to take care of our sleepy Facebook page. We hope to gain more audience in order to present our webinars, CEUs offers but also as a mean to disseminate behavior analysis to our colleagues, parents of potential people in need of services and other professionals.

Behavior Analysis is spreading in Switzerland. We are receiving an increasing number of emails asking about services as well as professionals seeking employment. The number of attendees at our webinars is increasing as well as the traffic on our website and facebook page. We are happy to see this development. The board of ABA Switzerland has been reaching out to big ABA providers in the country and trying to link everybody together within the chapter in order to reach a common standard for ABA in Switzerland in the future and in order to build a solid reputation and further disseminate quality ABA within the country.

This upcoming year, we will continue to focus on the dissemination of behavior analysis here in Switzerland. We will consider the development of the Swiss certification process for current BCBAs and BCaBAs and also of the future students from the recent masters. ABA Switzerland will have to think of its development as many of those tasks will need more human support than just our current board! 2022 will also be a year for a renewal in our board committee as our current treasurer and student representative won’t continue with us.