Rad N Bad: Collaboration or Collision — Interdisciplinary Coordination of Care and Generalization in ABA
Presented by Sean Yocum, MA, BCBA, LBA & Michael Carrero, BCBA, LBA
Coordination of care is often treated as an administrative courtesy, but it directly affects whether clients generalize skills across settings and providers. In this episode, hosts Sean Yocum and Michael Carrero explore interdisciplinary collaboration as a core clinical competency for behavior analysts. They discuss how consistent implementation across providers supports generalization; cross-training opportunities with occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, educators, and counselors; client-first advocacy, including IEP and funding support; learning to speak other disciplines' languages and approaching them with humility rather than defensiveness; giving supervisees the rationale behind interventions; supplementing (rather than duplicating) goals written by other disciplines; and barriers created by funding structures that discourage shared goals and data. The hosts use Skinner's analysis of verbal behavior to separate functional communication from prompted responding. Participants will leave with strategies for establishing collaborative relationships and for designing behavior-analytic programming that supports goals across disciplines.
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About this CEU
When everyone on a client's team pulls in the same direction, skills stick. Mike and I talk about coordinating with OTs, SLPs, teachers, and counselors without ego. We cover shared goals and the barriers that get in the way, so you can treat collaboration as part of your clinical competence. Disclosures & Publication Info No commercial products discussed. Both instructors are employed in ABA service delivery. Published: 2025-06-30 Listening to the podcast episode does not earn CEUs; credit is earned only by completing this OpenCEU event.
Abstract
Coordination of care is often treated as an administrative courtesy, but it directly affects whether clients generalize skills across settings and providers. In this episode, hosts Sean Yocum and Michael Carrero explore interdisciplinary collaboration as a core clinical competency for behavior analysts. They discuss how consistent implementation across providers supports generalization; cross-training opportunities with occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, educators, and counselors; client-first advocacy, including IEP and funding support; learning to speak other disciplines' languages and approaching them with humility rather than defensiveness; giving supervisees the rationale behind interventions; supplementing (rather than duplicating) goals written by other disciplines; and barriers created by funding structures that discourage shared goals and data. The hosts use Skinner's analysis of verbal behavior to separate functional communication from prompted responding. Participants will leave with strategies for establishing collaborative relationships and for designing behavior-analytic programming that supports goals across disciplines.
Credits
1 CEU · 59 min
From the talk
What was covered
Two BCBAs on why coordination of care is clinical work: shared goals, cross-training, and real communication vs prompted responding.
- Ask every other provider for their protocol and target list, then run it across your hours so a half hour of therapy becomes hours of practice.
- Before you teach a daily living skill, ask the family how they already do it at home, and teach that version first.
- Write goals that extend another discipline's target instead of copying it, so the team is not running two near identical goals.
- Put a measurable collaboration goal in the treatment plan: document each attempt to reach the other providers, at least monthly.
- Test whether a learner really communicates by removing the prompt: if nobody walks over first, does the request still happen?
- Give supervisees the reason behind every goal, and cut any goal you cannot justify years down the road.
Why Coordination of Care Decides Whether Skills Generalize
Coordination of care sounds like paperwork. The hosts treat it as clinical work instead. Their case is simple. Skills stick when the whole team pulls the same way. One host calls that the generalization gain. Generalization (using a skill in new places) is the point of most programs. It does not happen by luck.
Count the rule sets one client faces in a week. Mom has one. Dad has another. School has a third. The clinic has a fourth. When the rules keep shifting, learners get confused. Challenging behavior follows. The hosts name this behavior contrast (a shift when rules change). Shared plans shrink it.
Consistency also buys you integrity (running a plan as written). If everyone runs the same steps, you can finally test the plan. Doing something is not the same as doing it well. Then the payoff shows up. The learner does the skill with you, with the other provider, and with parents. That is generalization you can see.
More hands on the team also means more exposure. Practice shows up in more rooms, with more people. Progress comes faster, and it comes easier.
I call it the generalization gains. Like when you got everyone rowing in the same direction, that's when the client wins.
From the talk — Sean Yocum, MA, BCBA, LBA & Michael Carrero, BCBA, LBA
Turning Thirty Minutes of Speech Into Hours of Practice
Related service providers work in thin slices of time. The hosts point out that a provider may get a half hour a week. Hard new skills do not get learned in a half hour. They need steady practice and steady coaching. ABA teams often hold many more hours with the same child.
That gap is your leverage. Ask the speech provider for the protocol and the target sounds. Ask the OT for the grip or the step order. Then run it across your hours. You are not replacing anyone. You are extending the reach of their session.
The family gains too. You become the sounding board between visits. You can tell a parent what the plan was and how to keep it going. Parents start to see change at home. Buy in goes up when progress is visible.
Now picture the opposite. Speech works a goal. OT works a near copy. The ABA team works a third version. All three are coded differently and never compared. The parent drives to three places and sees no progress anywhere. The hosts say they understand exactly why that fails.
That 30 minutes of speech or service turns into hours.
From the talk — Sean Yocum, MA, BCBA, LBA & Michael Carrero, BCBA, LBA
Cross-Training: Take the Good Stuff From Other Disciplines
One host coaches youth baseball, and he uses it to make the point. You can win a trophy against weak teams. The kids do not get better. You improve by playing the teams that beat up on everybody. Working outside your own field does the same thing for your practice.
So go in looking for something to steal. Watch what an OT, an SLP, or a counselor does well. Then find a way to use it in your own programming. No single discipline can do it all. We are one piece of the puzzle, and a puzzle with missing pieces stays unfinished.
Push your organization to fund training on interdisciplinary skills. If it will not, go find that training yourself. Your scope of competence (what you are trained to do) is your job to grow. One host names PECS (picture cards for asking) as one of the best trainings he ever took. It was built by a speech pathologist. That is why it works across two fields at once.
The goal is not to become every provider on the team. The goal is to understand each one well enough to advocate for them. Education leads to advocacy. Advocacy sends you back for more education.
I know that steel sharpens steel, iron sharpens iron.
From the talk — Sean Yocum, MA, BCBA, LBA & Michael Carrero, BCBA, LBA
Write Goals That Supplement, Not Duplicate
Here is a rule you can use this week. Read the other discipline's goals. Then write targets that extend them instead of copying them. If the OT is working fine motor skills, do not write the same goal again. Build the same muscles in another activity, or teach the real life skill it feeds.
One host gives a concrete version. The OT works fine motor control. He uses a lacing board to build finger strength and control. Or he teaches shoe tying outright, because it matters in daily life. Same skill area, different slot on the plan.
Then ask a question most teams skip. How does this family do the skill at home? In supervision, a staff member built a task analysis (a skill broken into steps) for shoe tying his own way. Nobody asked the parent. Two bunny ears at home and a loop around the tree in session teach two different skills. That is where confusion and behavior come from.
Hand washing makes the same point. Does soap come before water? Look at the permanent product (the result you can see). Were the hands clean? The hosts lean on parsimony (pick the simplest answer first) here. Do not block a learner from soap to protect a task analysis you wrote without watching the client.
You don't need two of the same identical goals, but I'll figure out how to either generalize that skill or teach that in a variety of things.
From the talk — Sean Yocum, MA, BCBA, LBA & Michael Carrero, BCBA, LBA
The Barriers Nobody Trained You For
Start with how teams measure things. One host describes reports that say a learner masters a skill with prompts. Mastered while prompted means the adult made it happen. He asks for the data instead. He also admits he does not know the reporting rules other fields follow. That humility matters more than the complaint.
Next comes language. Every field has its own dialect. We talk about function and verbal behavior (how words work as behavior). They talk in their own terms. If nobody code switches (changes how they talk to fit the room), the team gets alienated fast. Drop the jargon and say it plainly.
Then there is time. Meetings, emails, and follow ups all take hours. Coordination time is often not billable, so the first question becomes who covers the session. One host says he answers that he is only there to watch and learn. People look at him like he has five heads.
Add two more. Nobody taught us collaboration in school, the same way nobody taught us parent training. You pass the exam, get a caseload, and figure it out. And meetings fill up with mentalism (explaining behavior with inner feelings). Someone says the client was sad today. Ask what sad looked like, so you can actually help. Under all of it sits the turf war over who owns the social goals and whose protocol wins. The client absorbs the damage.
It has nothing to do about methods. It's not about data. It's about ego, language, and assumptions.
From the talk — Sean Yocum, MA, BCBA, LBA & Michael Carrero, BCBA, LBA
Functional Communication or Just Responding to Prompts?
One host describes an IEP (a school special education plan) meeting that went in circles. The team said the student had functional communication. He asked for a scenario check. You cannot open your pencil case. Do you ask for help on your own? The answer was no. Staff walk over and ask if he needs help.
That is the whole distinction. A mand (asking for something you want) starts with the learner. A reply to an adult's question starts with the adult. The hosts bring Skinner's analysis of verbal behavior into the room to name it. If your words control mine, I am not communicating. I am responding.
Take it out of the classroom. You get lost in a grocery store. Do you know who to approach and what to say? Will you do it with nobody prompting you? Most people nearby are kind and will ask if you need help. That kindness becomes the prompt, and the skill stays untested.
The team's answer was that he does not need to ask, because they are always there. The host's reply was that this is not learning. A barrier is not a limitation. Someday the adult is not in the room. If we want independence, we program for it early and we program for it consistently.
Communication implies that my verbal behavior dictates your verbal behavior.
From the talk — Sean Yocum, MA, BCBA, LBA & Michael Carrero, BCBA, LBA
The AAC Lesson: The Button Has Control, Not the Voice
The second story runs through a speech generating device (a device that talks for you). The ABA team was bridging from picture cards to the device and taking data on it. The host brought that data to the speech provider to coordinate. The reply was that picture cards are archaic and the device is her scope.
So he asked how she teaches it. The device gets loaded with all the words: help, more, open, all done. Staff listen for what the device says. If it says help, they give help. If it says more, they give more. He repeated it back to be sure he understood.
Then came three questions. What happens if the learner presses help in a bathroom with nobody in the room? Who carries the device when the learner walks away? And what if the volume is down and staff only see the press? Staff would still honor the press. That answer settles it. The press is what holds stimulus control (when a cue controls behavior), not the voice.
Flip the audio files and the problem gets loud. The learner presses help and the device announces all done. Staff respond anyway. The teaching never attached meaning to the button. Both hosts note the fix is not to ditch the device. Teach words that hold value for the learner, and check what the learner is actually learning.
you're basically teaching her how to be a butler with a bell.
From the talk — Sean Yocum, MA, BCBA, LBA & Michael Carrero, BCBA, LBA
Make Collaboration a Documented Requirement
The hosts land on a practical fix. Put collaboration in the treatment plan, not on a checklist. Then they poke the holes in their own idea. Your organization may not have OT, PT, or speech in house. So the requirement becomes attempts to collaborate, written with objective and measurable criteria. Try at least once a month. One voicemail with no follow up does not count.
The funding side is harder. One host asks why he cannot take data on another discipline's goal. He defines it objectively, measures it, even shares video of the learner doing it. The other provider still cannot count it, because the rules say they have to see it themselves. Shared goals and shared data get blocked by how services are funded, not by the science.
Inside your own team, the move is cheaper. Give your RBTs (the techs running your plans) the reason behind every goal. Tell them to ask when something does not make sense. If you cannot justify a goal five or ten years out, it should not be a goal.
Across teams, phrasing carries the weight. Coming in hot gets you a wall. Asking whether someone has thought about it another way gets you a conversation. Get curious instead of combative, and assume good intent until proven otherwise. We ask clients to generalize skills across every setting. We should be able to generalize our own professionalism across a team.
Collaboration's not optional. It's actual clinical competence.
From the talk — Sean Yocum, MA, BCBA, LBA & Michael Carrero, BCBA, LBA
Common questions
How does coordination of care actually affect generalization?▾
When providers run the same plan the same way, the learner practices one skill instead of four versions of it. The hosts point out that rules differ at home, at school, and in the clinic, and that contrast confuses learners. Shared plans cut the contrast and let the skill show up with everyone. That is generalization, and it also lets you test whether the plan works at all.
What do I do when another provider refuses to collaborate?▾
Document the attempt and keep the standard measurable. The hosts suggest writing attempts to collaborate into the treatment plan. Use objective criteria, such as a documented attempt at least once a month. A message left with no follow up is not an attempt. Keep programming to supplement their goals even if they never share data back.
How do I write a goal that supplements another discipline instead of duplicating it?▾
Read their goal, then build a target that extends it into a different activity or a real life routine. Say the OT works on fine motor control. One host uses a lacing board, or teaches shoe tying, instead of rewriting the OT goal. You keep your own data and your own measure. The learner gets more reps of the same underlying skill.
How can I tell if a learner is communicating or just responding to prompts?▾
Remove the adult prompt and see what happens. If staff always walk over and ask whether help is needed, the learner is responding, not requesting. The hosts use Skinner's analysis of verbal behavior to make the split. If someone else's words set off the response, that is responding under their control, not communicating. Probe it with real situations, like being unable to open something with nobody offering first.
Does listening to the podcast episode earn CEUs?▾
No. Listening to the episode on its own does not earn credit. Credit is earned only by completing this OpenCEU event, which includes the attendance requirements and the quiz.
Why is collaboration time so hard to protect?▾
Much of it is not billable. Meetings, emails, and follow ups eat real hours. The first question in any observation request is usually who is covering the session. The hosts also note that nobody trained them to collaborate in school. Nobody trained them in parent training either. So the skill gets assumed rather than taught.
About the speaker
Sean Yocum, MA, BCBA, LBA and Michael Carrero, BCBA, LBA host the Rad N Bad podcast from Hickory Learning Group. They talk about the messier parts of modern ABA practice. In this episode they draw on their own work coordinating with OTs, SLPs, teachers, and school teams. That includes IEP meetings and AAC programming that went sideways. Both supervise staff and supervision students. Both argue that collaboration is a clinical skill you have to train, not a courtesy.
This summary was generated from the recording’s transcript. Quotes are taken word for word from the talk.
What you'll learn
- 1Describe at least two ways consistent implementation across providers supports stimulus and response generalization. Identify at least three strategies for establishing and maintaining collaborative relationships with professionals from other disciplines. Describe how to design behavior-analytic targets that supplement, rather than duplicate, goals written by other disciplines. Distinguish functional, spontaneous communication (e.g., mands) from responding that is under the control of others' prompts, using Skinner's analysis of verbal behavior.
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