BA285 Unit 3 Competence and Supervision Paper Example

A New Client Who Bangs His Head and a Supervisor I Rarely See: A BA285 Unit 3 Scope of Competence and Supervision Paper

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

BA285: Ethics in Behavior Analysis

Unit 3 Scope of Competence and Supervision Paper

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The writer, her agency, her supervisor and the client are composite; the codes and articles cited are real.

The Assignment

My agency sends registered behavior technicians like me into family homes across several rural Kentucky counties. In April, the agency's scheduler called to say that a new client, Tanner, a nine-year-old with autism and an intellectual disability, needed services to start the following Monday. His intake report noted frequent head banging against walls and floors, sometimes hard enough to cause bruising, and a crisis plan that included specific blocking and padding procedures written by his previous provider.

Before Tanner, I had never worked with a client whose behavior caused injury, and my training had covered self-injury only in a short online module. I had not been trained on Tanner's crisis plan or observed anyone implement it. At the same time, my supervising behavior analyst, who carries more than twenty supervisees across three counties, had observed my sessions in person only once in the previous six weeks, and our monthly supervision meetings had become phone calls.

Scope of Competence

The RBT ethics code requires technicians to provide services only within their training and role, under the direction of a qualified supervisor, and to seek supervision when they encounter situations beyond their competence (Behavior Analyst Certification Board, 2021). Brodhead et al. (2018) describe scope of competence as the range of professional activities a practitioner can perform independently because of education, training and supervised experience, and argue that practitioners must assess it honestly for each new population, setting and procedure. They note that competence in one area does not transfer automatically to another.

By that definition, Tanner's case was outside my competence. I could implement a skill acquisition program, collect data and use reinforcement procedures. I could not, however, safely implement a crisis plan for severe self-injury without training, modeling, practice and supervised implementation. Starting on Monday without that preparation would put Tanner at risk of injury from a poorly executed block and put me at risk as well.

Saying yes to the Monday start would have looked helpful; it would actually have shifted the risk of my inexperience onto a nine-year-old.

Supervision

Supervision is the mechanism that is supposed to close gaps in competence. The BACB requires that registered behavior technicians be supervised for at least five percent of their service hours each month, with at least two face-to-face contacts, one of which includes direct observation with a client. My supervisor was meeting the minimum on paper, but the observations were brief and the meetings were mostly scheduling.

Sellers et al. (2016) argued that supervisors in behavior analysis take full responsibility for the services their supervisees deliver, and that ethical supervision involves far more than meeting hour requirements. It includes establishing clear expectations, assessing and building the supervisee's skills, monitoring client outcomes and attending to the supervisee's professional development. They identified common barriers, such as large caseloads and organizational pressure, that lead supervisors to provide less than their supervisees need.

My situation fit their description. The problem was not my supervisor's intentions but a caseload that left little time for the kind of supervision a severe case requires. If I started with Tanner, she would be responsible for services she had not prepared me to deliver and could not closely monitor.

What I Did

I called the scheduler back that afternoon and said I could not start Monday without training on the crisis plan. I then emailed my supervisor, copying the clinical director as agency policy requires for safety concerns, with three requests: a training session on Tanner's crisis plan, including role-play, before my first session; her presence at my first two sessions with Tanner; and a conversation about increasing in-person observation while I worked with him. I described the concern factually, avoided criticizing her and proposed two specific dates for the training.

The clinical director moved Tanner's start date by one week. My supervisor trained me and another technician together on the crisis plan, with role-play using padding and a mannequin, and attended my first two sessions. She also arranged for a senior technician, who had worked with Tanner's previous provider, to co-lead sessions for the first month. In a follow-up meeting, the director acknowledged that supervisor caseloads had grown too large and said the agency was hiring another behavior analyst for our region.

What the Family Experienced

The week's delay was not costless. Tanner's mother, Ms. Webb, had arranged to leave work early on Mondays for his sessions, and the change meant another week of managing his head banging alone. When my supervisor called to explain, Ms. Webb was frustrated and asked whether the agency was turning Tanner away. My supervisor explained that the delay was to make sure the people working with him knew his safety plan, and invited Ms. Webb to the training session so she could see the procedures and practice them herself.

That invitation changed the conversation. Ms. Webb came, practiced the blocking procedure with the padding and told us which of Tanner's warning signs she watches for, a hum that rises in pitch before he hits his head. That detail was not in the intake report. It became the first item in his crisis plan, and it helped me intervene earlier in my first session than I otherwise would have.

Reflection

The decision was harder than the analysis makes it look. Families wait months for services in our area, Tanner's mother had been told he would start Monday, and I worried about seeming unwilling. Brodhead et al. (2018) note that pressure to expand services can push practitioners beyond their competence, especially in underserved areas. Recognizing that pressure helped me separate the family's need for services from the question of whether I could deliver them safely.

Conclusion

Tanner's case presented two linked ethical problems: an assignment outside my scope of competence and supervision too thin to bridge the gap. The RBT code required me to work within my training and seek supervision, research on scope of competence explained why my existing skills did not transfer, and the ethics of supervision placed responsibility for closing the gap on my supervisor and agency. A one-week delay, hands-on training, observed sessions and co-leading protected Tanner and produced a structural change that will help other technicians too.

References

Behavior Analyst Certification Board. (2021). RBT ethics code (2.0). Author.

Brodhead, M. T., Quigley, S. P., & Wilczynski, S. M. (2018). A call for discussion about scope of competence in behavior analysis. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 11(4), 424-435. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-018-00303-8

Sellers, T. P., Alai-Rosales, S., & MacDonald, R. P. F. (2016). Taking full responsibility: The ethics of supervision in behavior analytic practice. Behavior Analysis in Practice, 9(4), 299-308. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40617-016-0144-x