Taiwan ABA

By Li-Tsun Wang

The last year was the year when the Covid-19 epidemic affected Taiwan the most, children in school from preschool to college needed to study on-line, the situation prompted some telehealth services to rise in Taiwan, but most parents still got used to taking children for special kids by face-to-face services, so children met been stopped their therapies for a while, these affect their learning very much and these situation let parents most spend more time to reschedule children’s routine in the home. At the start of 2023, the covid-19 seems to become gradually stable, and this will be helpful for more ABA services in institutions and schools. The following were activities during 2022 in Taiwan ABA (TABA), and most of them were online, and from July to December, the activities also invited parents or therapists on China to joint. And Taiwan ABA collected feedback from audiences for these to set up the topic for 2023 academic conference, we thank for those participants to provide opinion. These will promote better practice for Taiwan’s ABA development.

During April to July, TABA held 3 lectures for parents, BCaBAs and BCBAs , each was three hours. The presentation topics include “Apply PBS to kinder gardens and home settings “, lecturer was Dr. Pei-Fang Rachel Wu, “Overcoming challenges of Conducting a Center-Based Social Skills Class for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders” and “ABA and the Treatment of Pediatric Feeding Disorders for Children with ASD”, during lectures besides the basic behavior principles and lecturer illustrated some examples for promote application. A total of 185 participants and some of them joined two to three lectures, and 87 of them got type II continuing education credit by
these events.

And during September to November 2022, TABA held four lectures for parents and therapists still online, each was two hours, and the ethics topic provided type II continuing education credit. Including “Ethical and Legal Concerns in Behavioral Interventions for High-Risk Behaviors” lecturer was Dr. Grace Ho(BCBA-D), “Teaching Self-Determination for children with special needs.”, lecturer was Dr. Chen-Ya Juan, “Teaching Pretend Play for special Kids” lecturer was Yu-Hsuan Chen( B.Ed. BCaBA),and ““The frequent problems and better ways for transition of Special Children from Kindergarten to early elementary School Stage” lecturer was special education teacher Mr. Wang Yana. About the above events, 121 participants attended these lectures.

The web promoting to introduce and recommend literature and review literature about ABA research or practice on JABA or other Journals by short summary abstracts in Chinese, there were 6 abstracts on TABA’s web during 2022, through this way encouraged people more easily to select and find papers. And will continue these to 2023. And Board of Taiwan ABA will plan invite senior BCBA to hold a discussion session to let Taiwan ABA’s member deep learning and touching literatures, to know more trends and new practical improvements.

About the year 2023

TABA annual academic conference was on 5/7 and 5/8, and focused on the topic” The Applied Behavior Analysis Recent Research and Clinical Practice in Treatment of behavioral problems”, we invited Dr. James King, BCBA-D, who is the program director, ABA Department in SEEK Inc., and Dr. Grace Ho to lecture, will welcome different area workers, such as teachers of special education, therapists, and behavior analysts attend, and will provide continuing education credits.

2023 Taiwan ABA will still hold several training sessions, like lectures or workshops, and most will be online and hope to have a chance to provide training face to face. The topic of workshop during 2023, focus on behavior problems, also invite professors and practitioners to speak teach self-determination for special kids in more detail and practically, and We will keep on our mission to spread knowledge of behavior analysis to professionals and parents, promote the science in Taiwan, to held more lectures or workshops to provide behavior analyst’s continuing education credits, and to fulfill audience’s need in future.

Taiwan ABA Team has big plans to set up the system which Taiwan’s localization behavior analysts’ certificate, and more professors and practitioners will joint Taiwan’s ABA’s board. get together to promote ABA services as more diverse, ethical, and professional in Taiwan, and keep spreading the better ABA practice.