July 2024 Newsletter
A Note from our Leadership Team
As we are heading into the warm summer months, we hope you are able to enjoy time outside with family and friends! We know that there is often a change in routine with school being out and summer vacations being scheduled, so get in touch with your Behaviour Consultant (BC) to plan to make up any missed sessions. Consistency with intervention sessions and keeping hours of intervention as recommended by your BC leads to optimal results. We wish you a great summer!
Important Dates
- June 27th is the last day of classes for schools in BC.
- July 1st is Canada Day a statutory holiday. Sessions scheduled for this day will need to be rescheduled.
- August 5th is BC Day a statutory holiday. Sessions scheduled for this day will need to be rescheduled.
Community Events to Explore with the Family
Summer is the time to get outside and check out new activities! Check out the list below of community events happening the next few months!
- Catch a movie at Landmark Cinemas on their sensory friendly mornings! You can bring your own snacks and watch the movie at a quieter volume. You can find more information here.
- The City of Burnaby is hosting free, family fun activities along the Parkway all summer long! You can find out more information about the planned activities and the days at times on their website.
- Burnaby Heritage Museum is hosting BC Day activities on August 5th. Admission is free and there are many family friendly activities to explore. You can even ride the carousel!
- In New West, you can find a number of playground pop ups happening in local parks. Activities include crafts and games in the park. You can find more information about locations and days here.
- West Coast Exotics will be displaying a number of Lizards in the George Mackie Library in Delta this July! Head over to get a close up look at this crawly critters.
Caregivers Corner
At FCPG, we are passionate and committed to providing ongoing training opportunities for caregivers of our clients. This month, we are sharing a blog post that provides tips on creating a successful summer break!
Summer time marks a big shift in routine for most children and days can be long and busy! There are some easy to implement strategies that can provide much needed structure and predictability for your child that will still allow you flexibility to take advantage of all the opportunities summer has to offer. You can check out this blog post for more information on these strategies!
Staff Training & Professional Development Opportunities
At FCPG, we are dedicated and committed to providing ongoing training opportunities for our staff so they can best serve our clients. Ongoing training and support is a crucial part of our practice as professional Behaviour Analysts. The consultants you are working with provide caregivers and BIs with direct individualized behavioural skills training (BST) and as an organization we strive to provide our BIs with complimentary additional training related to their professional development in the field. We are hopeful BIs will want to continue down this professional career path and work in the field of ABA in support of individuals with autism and related disabilities. It is a path of continual learning and growth and we are so pleased to have team members committed to this work. There are plenty of advancement opportunities at FCPG and we we are always looking to help build knowledge and capacity.
Some of the training opportunities we are focused on across May, June and July include:
- General Child Safety & Crisis Management: At Family Centred Practices Group, safety is a top priority. As a team we do ongoing training on how to effectively prevent and manage crisis situations with the families we are supporting. Your behavioural consultant will be sharing this information with each team during an upcoming team meeting with individualized supports and strategies designed for each child in our program.
- FCPG Communication Guidelines and Preventing and Reporting Abuse: At Family Centred Practices Group, we strive to create a positive and inviting workplace and are actively creating opportunities to engage in respectful conflict resolution. At our monthly Clinical Team Meeting in March, we had a presentation from one of our Senior Behavioural Consultants, Kourtney Rasmussen, M.A, BCBA who discussed FCPG’s communication guidelines, conflict resolution tools, and preventing and reporting abuse. As mandated reporters we are required to communicate any visible signs of abuse or neglect. Our team is trained on this when they begin work with FCPG and we offer this training annually.
- Upcoming BI Workshop: We provide ongoing workshops for our BIs to learn more about topics relevant to the BI role and the field of ABA.
Consultant Spotlight
Kenny is a Behaviour Consultant with FCPG and has been with us since 2019! We connected with Kenny to learn more about him and why he loves being part of FCPG! To find out more about Kenny and his credentials, you can visit his full bio here.
What’s your favourite part about being being a Behaviour Consultant with FCPG?
- The well-rounded support of supervisors, behaviour consultants and office staff. With the number of experienced behaviour consultants we have, I can get answers quickly and from different aspects of the ABA field.
Who inspires you?
- I would say Katie Treleaven, my first behaviour consultant when I started as a Behaviour Interventionist. Her professionalism and compassion in working with her families inspire me to work towards my BCBA.
What’s something about you (a fun fact) that not many people know?
- I used to work as a chef in my university years.
If you were stuck on an island what three things would you want to have with you?
- My phone for music, my favourite board game, a Swiss Army Knife
Three words that best describe me:
- Patience, Funny, Flexible
BI Spotlight
Brenna Parker has been a Behavioural Interventionist with FCPG since 2022. We connected with Brenna to learn about why she is proud to be working with FCPG as a BI!
What’s your favourite part about being being a Behaviour Interventionist with FCPG?
- There is so much I love about being a BI with FCPG but my favorite part has to be getting to see clients reach their goals. It is a privilege to be able to support our clients and to be apart of those exciting moments!
Who inspires you?
- Someone who inspires me is my mom. She is incredibly hard working, kind, resilient, and has shown me the power of inclusion and empathy. Even though she does not work in this field, I believe her values and everything she has taught me has greatly contributed to my passion for helping and supporting other people.
What’s something that about you that people may not know?
- I love to sing and song-write. While I am in school full time and that keeps me busy, I love to perform and record music when I can. I am hoping once I graduate I will have more time to pursue music on the side!
What’s the next place on your travel bucketlist?
- I would really love to go to Ireland. A large part of my ancestry traces back there and I think it would be really cool to finally see where my roots come from!
What are three words that best describe you?
- Caring, kind, and ambitious
Consultant Resource
Along with the numerous events and resources provided directly from FCPG, we also want to share with our team about opportunities in the community for professional development. This month, we would like to share about a training opportunity on diversity, equity and inclusion.
This online course provides behaviour analysts with a framework for diversity, equity and inclusion including definitions and general concepts for this area. This on demand course is worth 1.5 CEUs and is a great topic to expand on the knowledge you’ve already learned during FCPG’s diversity, equity and inclusion trainings.
BI Resource
To ensure high quality early intervention programs for all our clients we continue to provide ongoing training opportunities and resources to our Behaviour Interventionists.
Differential reinforcement involves withholding reinforcement for a specific behaviour that is targeted for reduction and providing high levels of reinforcement for the targeted replacement behaviour. There are three differential reinforcement procedures that can be implemented that we want to share with you.
1. Differential reinforcement of an alternative behaviour, which involves choosing a specific alternative behaviour that will allow the learner to access the same reinforcer as the challenging behaviour you are trying to reduce and providing access to the reinforcer contingent on the replacement behaviour.
2. Differential reinforcement of incompatible behaviours, which involves reinforcing only an appropriate replacement behavior that cannot occur at the same time as the challenging behavior.
3. Differential reinforcement of other behaviour, which involves withhold reinforcement for challenging
behavior and provide reinforcement for any other behavior in a specified time period.
To learn more about differential reinforcement and the steps involved in successful implementation, you can visit this blog post https://ebip.vkcsites.org/differential-reinforcement/.