BEH 0016 - Implementing Meaningful and Respectful Interventions: Creating Goals that Matter Across the Lifespan

Course Description

This presentation will discuss the process for choosing and individualizing goals that matter. Tools will be provided to empower parents to advocate for goals that are highly individualized and important to them. Additionally, supports will be outlined to help professionals work with parents throughout this goal selection process to promote social validity and the best outcomes possible for individuals with autism and other developmental disabilities.

Examples and non-examples of functional, socially valid goals will be presented, as well as recommendations on how to individualize goal writing and apply clinical judgment to use assessments and curricula as guides and not roadmaps. The focus will be on the dynamic nature of meaningful outcomes for individuals with disabilities across the lifespan. Methods to create programming to support meaningful goals will be shared, as well as recommendations regarding use of individualized strengths and learning style within teaching applied skills.

Learning objectives:

By the end of this course, participants will be able to discuss the:

• Continued, central importance of social validity when identifying target behaviors to either increase or decrease.
• Implications of social validity in the development of individualized functional and applied goals.
• Role context plays in the development of an interdependent life in adulthood.