Developing a Competence Framework for ABA and Autism: What Can we Learn From Others?

Competence frameworks have become a defining feature of modern professions. They were originally developed to facilitate training and to help benchmark pay scales. However, they are increasingly being used to achieve a high level of consistency with respect to quality of service provision, assessing performance, and providing a basis of common language both within a profession and for its external audience. The present paper describes the process we employed to define the scope and structure of a framework appropriate for the field of ABA, specifically focused on autism education in the UK. We present an overview of the issues that led to the proposals to develop such a framework, a review of the common and critical features of competence frameworks across health and education in the UK, and discuss how these features might best map onto ABA practice in typical settings, as well as the Behavior Analyst Certification Board (2005) Behavior analyst task list, third edition.