‘We Want to be Proactive’: BCBAs Make A Positive Impact

The Rise Center for Success welcomed three new Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs) to the CVES Family of Professionals this past year. BCBAs utilize Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA), the scientific and systematic processes to help influence an individual’s behavior, to create strategic intervention plans for students.

With BCBAs in high demand in the local area, the Rise team was thrilled to bring aboard Audrey Crucetti, Kayla Laughlin and Jeffrey Parker. Their expertise has brought significant day-to-day success and support to Rise students.

MEET THE BCBAs: CRUCETTI

Crucetti, whose been a BCBA for 17 years, started her journey by studying psychology at Millersville University in Pennsylvania. During her schooling, she started working with a little boy who had autism, and her enjoyment and passion to work with students one-on-one began.

“I worked with him 20 hours a week on top of the caseload I was managing, and I fell in love with autism and ABA,” Crucetti said.

She went on to get her master’s degree at the New England Center for Children in Boston. She moved from the hub of ABA to Plattsburgh in 2007 with her husband, when ABA wasn’t well known.

“I really had to pave my own way in this area of the country,” Crucetti said.

She has worked for a handful of different local companies and school districts. She is also the president of Autism Alliance of Northeastern New York. With Rise, Crucetti works with the Life Skills program and Mineville program.

MEET THE BCBAs: LAUGHLIN

Laughlin, who had always wanted to work with children, obtained her teaching degree for children birth to six, regular education. While getting her master’s degree, she started tutoring a girl with down syndrome and realized she needed to change her course of study to include children with disabilities.

She then went back to school to get her master’s in teaching birth to six, special education.

“While I was going through that process, I realized that it wasn’t enough one-to-one support with kids,” Laughlin said. “I needed to impact the students more than I could as a
classroom teacher.”

She moved to Montana in 2016, where she worked in early intervention, servicing children
birth through five.

“Our agency had a separate learning center, which was insurance-based ABA services for children with autism, and they asked me if I wanted to go back to school to become a BCBA,” Laughlin said.

She took that opportunity and then ran the learning center for two years before moving back to the region. With Rise, Laughlin works with the Academic, Behavioral and ITSP classrooms.

MEET THE BCBAs: PARKER

Parker didn’t have a traditional path to becoming a BCBA. He started his academic journey
by studying French at SUNY New Paltz but dropped out after three years. He then worked an array of jobs until 2010.

“I realized that my life was taking no direction, and I was working a job I didn’t like,” Parkersaid. “So, that’s when I decided to go back to school.”

He received his bachelor’s degree in psychology.

“I wanted to be a clinical psychologist, but somewhere along the way, I started studying behaviorism and fell in love with it,” he said.

His first job as a BCBA was working with people in Texas who had traumatic brain injuries. Then he ran his own business in Dallas, working with teenagers and adults with autism and other comorbidities, like depression and anxiety.

He moved back to Plattsburgh to be closer to family and found a team of support through Rise. With Rise, Parker works with the Autism program.

CREATING A PLAN OF SUPPORT

The main, overarching goal of a BCBA is to create a plan that reduces or eliminates a challenging behavior. BCBAs create behavior plans and do functional behavior assessments, which is where they look at why certain behaviors are happening.

Through their behavior plans, they help decrease challenging behaviors and increase replacement behaviors. But that’s far from the only thing they do.

“Crisis intervention takes up most of our time,” Laughlin said. “If there’s a crisis with a student, we are there helping to deescalate the situation.”

Laughlin and Crucetti are both trainers for therapy crisis intervention, which means they know how to engage in a safe hold to reduce the risk of harm to students and staff. They are also the first BCBAs to be hired to work with programs outside of autism.

A large portion of time is spent on updating and writing plans for students and doing assessments.

“Historically, autism programs have been on its own island, but we’re trying to streamline everything, so it’s more connected,” Parker said. “We have enough BCBAs to allow for cross-training and learning how some ideas might work with their students, but not with my students who have autism.”

Crucetti, Laughlin and Parker have roughly 40 to 50 students on their caseload. Collaboration and teamwork are great assets for them to utilize.

“Typically, in this area, there’s only one BCBA at a district, so it’s been very nice to be able to collaborate with other behavioral analysts,” Crucetti explained. “Behavior analysis is very individualized, so we need small caseloads in order to look over all the patterns and data, so that we are getting great outcomes.”

BRINGING NEW IDEAS

The three individuals have implemented new systems that proactively check-in with students throughout the day.

“We’re implementing the Zones of Regulation program schoolwide. It’s a color-coded
emotional regulation system, where we’re going to proactively check-in throughout the day with how they’re feeling,” Crucetti said. “Those feelings will be associated with different coping strategies. The hope is that we want to be as proactive as possible, so students don’t end up in crisis.”

The BCBAs are coming in with skills and knowledge to further elevate learning and achieving success in the classrooms. They are also spearheading class-wide behavior management plans, so the same language is being used from program to program or classroom to classroom. A Calming Corner was also created by the BCBAs.

“It’s a spot for students who aren’t at peak crisis, but still need to get out of the classroom,” Laughlin said. “It’s to help us get to them before they get to an unsafe place. We are, again, just trying to be a proactive as possible.”

The BCBAs aren’t only focusing on student success, but also staff success. They rely heavily on staff members to help implement a student’s plan. Staff training is a big part of optimizing plans.

“I think there’s two types of training — the one that’s scheduled ahead of time, and the one that happens in the moment,” Parker said.

When scheduled, Parker likes to go over a behavior plan for a student, and he likes to role play the behavior to demonstrate while in a controlled environment. He finds it to be “very effective” to teaching staff this way.

When in the moment, Parker approaches training in one of two ways. The first would be to help quickly, by running a plan by the staff and then modeling it for them. The second would be to observe the staff during the situation and give feedback later.

“We also work with students who are able after a crisis or behavioral event to process what happened or what made them feel that way,” Laughlin said. “We come up with ideas of what might go better next time. We practice these things, and we take their input for when we write their plans.”

‘EVERY BEHAVIOR HAS A REASON’

BCBAs work closely with students to provide them with plans and support that will yield the greatest results. They noted that sometimes things get worse before they get better.

“It’s human behavior to get upset when something changes, but we help coach our staff and students through these changes,” Crucetti said. “We monitor very closely during that time and make sure safety protocols are in place.”

With new plans, students learn and adjust to correct their behaviors. However, sometimes students don’t respond to the new plan, and the BCBAs come up with a different approach. All of these strategies lead to their goal of being proactive over reactive.

Strategies are implemented into students’ daily routines. Some examples are cards on their desks with different cues, like asking for a break, pictures of instruction and coping strategies. There are also incentives to reinforce positive behaviors, like token boards, prizes and a school store.

“Every behavior has a reason,” Lauglin said. “These aren’t bad kids. These are kids who have experienced extreme trauma, who have learned a behavior that was reinforced their whole lives, who aren’t living in the best situations. We have to teach them another way to get their needs met, and sometimes it takes a long time.”

Crucetti, Laughlin and Parker brought incredible ideas to further improve the environment at Rise within the past year. In the upcoming school year, they will continue to elevate services provided to students and aid staff.

“At the Rise Center for Success, we are inspired daily by the incredible impact of our new BCBAs. Their expertise and innovative approaches are not only transforming individual lives but also enriching our entire community,” Rise Director Dr. Matthew Slattery said. “Through their dedication, they bring new hope and success to our students, proving that with the right support and collaboration, every challenge can be turned into an opportunity for growth and achievement. Their work exemplifies that when we come together with passion and purpose, we elevate the potential of every student and foster a brighter future for all.”

Read more stories from our Annual Report here.