Polish Association of Behavioral Therapy
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By Paweł Bakalarz
Our association is one of two major organizations in Poland concerned with dissemination of behavior analytic knowledge and services. We are a country-wide non-profit, the membership of which consists of both practitioners and family members of people with special needs. We cooperate with Polish Society for Behavioral Psychology, the other major organization in Poland (ABAI Chapter), and also with a number of universities and therapy centers.
Together with PSBS we oversee Polish Behavior Therapist License, a private certification system for practitioners, both line therapists and supervisors that standardizes the requirements and establishes the standard of care for clients. There are currently over 200 licensed therapists and almost 40 supervisors, with a couple of thousands of candidates in different stages of professional development.
We also provide direct services. We are a managing organization for three schools for children and youth with special needs: in Kraków and Racibórz. There are currently 29 students in “Umiem” (“I can”) schools in both cities. There is also behavior therapy consultation and therapy center that provides diagnosis (psycho-pedagogical, functional, ADOS-2), behavior programming and therapy to clients. Another form of direct help is Emergency Intervention Team that provides therapeutic services in severe cases of health- and life-threatening disruptive behaviors or learning deficits. Additionally, our association runs a project concerned with OBM and provision of behavioral services to business and organizations.
Currently we are monitoring the ongoing changes in legislation concerning psychotherapy in Poland. We are also planning to extend the range of professional development for it to include organizational behavior management. In addition, we want to start disseminating knowledge about the foundations of behavioral gerontology. Current plans include also closer cooperation with other Polish organizations that represent behavior specialists, especially “third wave” psychotherapists.