ABA Australia

By Alexandra Brown

ABA Australia continues to grow and develop. Our work on the self-regulation of our profession has been a priority over the past few years. We are proud to announce that we began taking memberships for Certified Behavior Analysts in August 2022. Since these huge changes have taken effect, many eligible members have applied for certification. This has allowed us to create a second paid position, which has assisted greatly in processing applications. The process of developing our own self-regulatory body involved the creation of our own Code of Ethical Practice, Supervision Standards, and Continuing Professional Development Standards, along with new organizational policies and procedures. We chose to begin our Code of Ethics with an extensive section on Cultural Humility. ABA Australia is committed to supporting behavior analysts in a way that acknowledges and incorporates the importance of culture, the assessment of cross-cultural relations, vigilance towards the dynamics that result in cultural differences, the expansion of cultural knowledge, and the adaptation of services to meet culturally unique needs.

A core feature of our Code is to ensure that behavior analysts engage in conduct that promotes equity and the protection of people’s moral rights. Behind the scenes, we continue to have a number of working groups who are tackling our long-term goals of dissemination of behavior analysis and recognition of behavior analysts within our government, insurance, and allied health systems. We thank all of our board members and active volunteers for their efforts. In 2022, we were pleased to return to a face-to-face conference in Sydney. This was our first conference that offered pre-conference workshops and had multiple streams of presentations.

We also enjoyed the social networking that we had missed over the previous two years. We are looking to be even bigger in Brisbane in July 2023.ABA Australia representatives attended the conference in Denver in May 2023. As always, our attending board members also greatly appreciated ABAIs support for international chapters at the Affiliate Chapter Training. As we look forward to the next year, we will continue to work toward our ever-growing goals, with pride in our profession.