12 Questions to Ask an ABA Therapist Before Your Child Starts Therapy

Question 1: How many active clients does my child's BCBA supervise?

This is the single most predictive question you can ask about program quality. A BCBA's caseload determines how much individualized attention your child's program receives. A BCBA with 10 active clients can dedicate approximately twice the clinical time per child compared to one with 20 clients: time spent reviewing data, observing sessions, adjusting programs, and meeting with families.

Industry best practice is a maximum of 10 to 12 active clients per BCBA. If an agency cannot give you a specific number, or if the number is 15 or higher, ask how many supervision hours per month your child's BCBA will personally dedicate to their program. A BCBA with a large caseload can still provide quality care if the agency has a strong supervisory infrastructure, but you need to understand what that looks like specifically for your child.

Be cautious of agencies that frame this question as reflecting distrust or that deflect with generic statements about their supervision model. This is basic clinical information that any quality agency should disclose without hesitation.

Question 2: What assessment tools will you use, and when?

A quality ABA program is built on a comprehensive, individualized assessment: not a standardized intake questionnaire and a default treatment template. Before your child starts therapy, the supervising BCBA should conduct a direct assessment of your child's current skill levels using validated, published instruments.

Ask specifically which tools the agency uses. Standard options include the VB-MAPP, ABLLS-R, AFLS, and PEAK for skills assessment, and a Functional Behavior Assessment (FBA) for children with significant challenging behavior. Ask how long the assessment process takes, whether it involves direct observation of your child in natural settings, and how the results will be communicated to you before the treatment plan is written.

If the agency cannot name the specific assessment instruments they use, or if they propose starting therapy before the assessment is complete, those are meaningful red flags about their clinical rigor.

Question 3: What does caregiver training look like in your program?

Caregiver training is not a supplementary add-on to ABA therapy. It is a clinical requirement. The BACB's professional and ethical compliance code explicitly identifies caregiver training as a core component of behavior analyst practice. Your child's ability to generalize skills learned in therapy to real-life contexts depends on the adults in their life implementing consistent behavioral strategies.

Ask how many hours per month are dedicated to caregiver training, who delivers it, what format it takes, and how it is individualized to the specific skills your child is currently working on.

An agency that describes parent training as quarterly meetings to review progress is not meeting the standard. You should be receiving structured, skills-focused training regularly (at a minimum monthly, and ideally biweekly) that equips you to implement your child's program between therapy sessions.

Question 4: How will you measure and report my child's progress?

Data collection is the defining feature of ABA as a science. Ask how data is collected during sessions, how often the supervising BCBA reviews session data, and what the protocol is when a target is not progressing as expected.

Ask what written reporting you will receive and how often. Standard practice includes monthly progress notes and quarterly or semi-annual comprehensive progress reports. These reports should include graphs of your child's data, a summary of mastered targets, a description of current active targets and their trajectory, and the BCBA's clinical recommendations for the next treatment period.

A BCBA who describes progress in exclusively subjective terms, without being able to point you to specific data trends, is practicing below the standard. You are entitled to objective, graph-based documentation of your child's outcomes.

Question 5: What is your staff turnover rate, and how do you handle therapist transitions?

Therapist turnover is endemic in the ABA industry, driven by demanding work conditions, relatively low wages for RBTs, and high burnout rates. The therapeutic relationship between an RBT and a child is a significant factor in outcomes, and frequent therapist changes disrupt the consistency that ABA depends on. Ask directly: what is your annual RBT turnover rate?

Ask also how therapist transitions are managed. When an RBT leaves, is there a structured overlap period where the outgoing and incoming therapists work together? Is there a formal transition protocol that documents the child's current program, preferred strategies, reinforcer hierarchy, and behavioral considerations for the incoming therapist?

No agency will have zero turnover. But an agency that cannot quantify their turnover, dismisses the question, or has no structured transition protocol is one where your child will likely experience multiple unmanaged therapist changes over the course of their program.

Question 6: Who will actually work with my child, and what are their credentials?

In most ABA programs, the person spending the most hours with your child is not the BCBA. It is a Registered Behavior Technician (RBT), a paraprofessional who implements the program the BCBA designs. That is a normal and appropriate structure, but it means the quality of your child's day-to-day therapy depends heavily on who that technician is and how they are supported.

Ask whether the technician assigned to your child holds an active RBT certification, how long they have worked in the field, and whether they have experience with children of your child's age and profile. You can verify any RBT or BCBA credential yourself through the BACB's public certificant registry; a legitimate agency will not object to you doing so. Ask also whether the agency runs background screening on all staff who enter your home.

A strong answer names a specific person, states their credential and experience plainly, and offers to introduce them before the first session. A weak answer speaks only about the agency's hiring standards in general, or tells you a technician will be assigned once services begin. You should know who is coming to your home before they arrive.

Question 7: How often will the BCBA directly observe my child's sessions?

A treatment plan is only as good as its implementation, and the BCBA is the person responsible for checking that implementation. The BACB sets a minimum monthly supervision requirement for RBTs. Ask what percentage of your child's therapy hours the BCBA will personally observe, how often that observation happens in person rather than remotely, and what happens during a supervision visit.

Strong programs treat the BACB minimum as a floor. The BCBA observes sessions regularly, gives the technician specific feedback on how procedures are being run, checks that the data being collected matches what is actually happening, and uses what they see to adjust the program. Supervision that consists mainly of signing off on hours, or that happens exclusively over video, is meeting a requirement rather than improving your child's therapy.

Ask, too, whether you can be present during supervision visits. Watching the BCBA coach the technician is one of the best ways to understand your child's program and to learn the procedures yourself.

Question 8: Where will sessions happen, and how did you decide that?

ABA can be delivered in a clinic, at home, at school or daycare, and in community settings such as parks, stores, and restaurants. None of these is automatically better. The right setting is the one where the skills your child needs are actually used, because skills practiced only in a therapy room often fail to transfer to the places where they matter.

Ask the agency which settings they work in and how they decide where a given child's sessions take place. A thoughtful answer connects the setting to the goals: a child working on mealtime behavior benefits from sessions that include real meals at home; a child working on peer interaction benefits from sessions at school or in structured group settings; a child working on community safety needs to practice in the community.

Be cautious of an agency that offers only one setting and explains it in terms of their own logistics rather than your child's needs. Ask also how they plan to help your child generalize skills across settings, and how school-based sessions are coordinated with the teacher and the IEP team if your child has one.

Question 9: How are goals chosen, and how much say do I have?

Assessment results tell a BCBA what a child can and cannot yet do. They do not, by themselves, tell the BCBA which of those skills matter most to your family. Choosing goals is a clinical decision that should be made with you, not delivered to you.

Ask how the agency moves from assessment results to a treatment plan, how your family's priorities are gathered and weighed, and whether you will review and approve the goals before therapy begins. Ask how your child's own preferences and willingness to participate are taken into account, since a program a child actively resists is both less effective and harder to justify ethically.

A strong answer describes a collaborative planning meeting where the BCBA presents assessment findings, you describe what would make the biggest difference in your daily life, and the two perspectives are combined into a written plan you can read and question. A weak answer implies goals are set from the assessment alone, or presents a treatment plan as a finished document at the first session.

Question 10: What will the first month actually look like?

Parents often expect therapy to look like structured teaching from the first day. It usually does not, and a good agency will tell you that up front. The first sessions are typically spent building rapport (in ABA this is often called pairing), learning what motivates your child, and observing how they communicate and respond. Formal skill instruction is layered in as that foundation is built.

Ask the agency to walk you through the first 30 days: how many sessions are devoted to assessment and rapport, when formal targets begin, when you will see the first data, and when the first progress review with you is scheduled. Ask what a typical session looks like once the program is running. We describe this in detail in our article on what happens during an ABA session, and for younger children in our guide to the first 90 days of ABA for toddlers.

A strong answer gives you a timeline with specific milestones. A weak answer is vague about when instruction begins or, at the other extreme, promises rapid visible progress within the first weeks.

Question 11: What is my role during sessions?

Your involvement is not limited to caregiver training meetings. It extends to what you do while a session is happening in your home. Some programs expect a parent to be present and increasingly involved; others expect the parent to step back so the child and technician can work without distraction. Both can be appropriate at different stages, but you should know which is expected and why.

Ask whether you are expected to observe sessions, participate in them, or give the technician space. Ask how the program will transfer skills from the technician to you over time, since the long-term goal is that your child responds to you, not only to therapy staff. Ask how communication between sessions works: who you contact with a question, and how quickly you should expect an answer.

We wrote about why this matters so much in our article on the role of parent training in ABA therapy. If you want to build a foundation before therapy begins, our free Parent and Educator Training covers the core principles in about an hour.

Question 12: How will you decide when to reduce hours, and what does discharge look like?

The goal of ABA is for your child to need it less. An agency should be able to tell you, before therapy starts, how it decides when a child is ready for fewer hours, what the transition out of intensive services looks like, and what criteria would lead to discharge. If the honest answer is that they have never discharged a client who did not move or lose coverage, that is worth knowing.

Ask how insurance authorization affects this. Insurers approve a set number of hours for a set period, and continued authorization depends on documented progress. Ask how the agency handles the reauthorization process, what happens if approved hours are reduced, and whether the clinical recommendation for hours is made independently of what the insurer is likely to approve. If you are still working through coverage, our guide to ABA therapy eligibility requirements in Florida explains how authorization works in this state.

A strong answer describes a fading plan: hours step down as goals are met, parent-implemented strategies take over more of the day, and there is a planned follow-up after discharge. A weak answer treats the current level of service as permanent.

How to use these questions

Bring this list to your intake call or first meeting and take notes on the answers. You are not testing the agency; you are gathering the information you need to make a decision that will shape your child's week for a long time. Any provider who treats that as unreasonable is telling you something about how they will treat your questions once services begin.

You will not get perfect answers to every question, and no agency scores twelve out of twelve. What you are looking for is a pattern: specific, concrete answers to the questions about people and structure, and honest acknowledgment of limits where they exist. If you are still deciding whether ABA is the right approach at all, start with our article on whether ABA therapy is right for your child.