Compassionate Care Training for Behavior Analysts to Support Caregiver Collaboration

The field has made significant strides in establishing applied behavior analysis (ABA) interventions as evidenced-based practices in the treatment of autism spectrum disorder; however, treatment delivery has been criticized as lacking compassion. Based on research in other fields, approaching caregiver collaboration with compassion may foster collaborative relationships between clinicians and caregivers, who play a vital role in their child’s treatment, and may bolster treatment adherence, satisfaction, and outcomes. The purpose of this pilot study was to examine the impact of a compassionate care training for clinicians to support therapeutic relationships with caregivers. Participants included nine clinical supervisors employed at a community-based behavioral health agency. Clinical supervisors were randomly assigned to either an immediate-treatment group or delayed-treatment control group. Clinicians participated in a 5-week training program, which involved didactic instruction, behavior skills training, and acceptance and commitment training. At baseline, postdelay, and posttreatment, caregiver collaboration sessions were recorded, and the clinicians’ use of compassionate care was evaluated using a measure developed for the study. A statistically significant difference in clinicians’ use of compassionate care strategies following intervention was observed. Variability observed in pretreatment compassionate care scores for a single clinician across different caregivers appeared to normalize posttreatment for several clinicians. In addition, marked increases were seen in compassionate care scores for clinicians with lower initial ratings. Although limited to a small sample size, the results of the pilot study demonstrated feasibility of the compassionate care training and revealed an overall positive improvement posttreatment.