What’s a Behavioural Interventionist (BI)?
What is BI work specifically?
Behavioural Interventionist (BI) is correlated to Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA)) format. ABA is a type of intervention unique and specific to the person's needs. can range from play therapy to doing certain school, social or physical tasks. This can also be a combination of activities to make specific support plans for an individual consisting of both ABA and behavioural analysis.
What might it look like?
When looking at what programs are, they are very unique to the individual's needs usually between 10-15 plans and programs are made. In session, a behavioural interventionist will most likely pick between 5-8 programs to run depending on length of each program and person. An example of a program for younger individuals could be along the lines of identifying and saying a set of items based on an image. There would be specific prompts for the BI to help with depending on what stage the individual is at. This can look like a full vocal prompt such as the BI holding an image saying “orange” waiting for an individual to say “orange”. Another example of this at an older age could be a worksheet on identifying facial expressions. This would also have different stages of prompts. Looking at this in a way where you have a set of things in a program with different levels of prompts till the individual needs no prompts is able to move on to the next task. This also includes statistics that BI’s will take that will impact the advancing in stages.
How is this different from therapy?
When looking at therapy there are some similarities although the big difference is making specific plans for many different areas of one’s life. These are practiced and worked on every single week or potentially 2-3 times a week. From here data is taken on each program to adjust the way a program is run. There is a team meeting with members who work with the individual to notice new behaviours or new things that they might need support with. A large difference is the team aspect and having multiple different people working with the individual. Additionally if they are at a school age also looking at the connections and working with schools as well. Another major difference is that the individual usually doesn’t get a choice in programming as certain programs are run during certain sessions. Simply put, there’s less of coming into a session and talking about what you are currently struggling with and working through that. There is a small piece of that gets done but it usually gets talked about with the team working with individuals.
How to connect with a Behavioural interventionist?
Firstly you would have to find a Behavioural psychologist who usually have a team of behavioural interventionist that they can get you connected with. Although listed below are some resources in British Columbia you can seek out: