In the Field: The ABA Podcast

Rethinking ABA Service Delivery: A BCBA-Led Model with Chris Topham

• Allyson Wharam • Episode 27

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 45:59

🎙️ Podcast Episode: 

Rethinking ABA Service Delivery: A BCBA-Led Model with Chris Topham

In this episode of In the Field: The ABA Podcast, I sit down with Chris Topham, BCBA and co-founder of Celeration ABA, to explore how he’s reshaping the way ABA services are delivered. Chris shares how his journey from fine arts to behavior analysis—and his deep dive into precision teaching—sparked the creation of a BCBA-led service model that prioritizes outcomes, autonomy, and connection.

We discuss how Celeration ABA’s one-tier BCBA model impacts learner progress, staff burnout, and family satisfaction, as well as the intentional way Chris is scaling his team for quality over quantity. Chris also introduces The Autism Diagnosis Parent Plan, a free, practical course for caregivers navigating next steps after their child’s diagnosis.

🔑 Key Topics:

  • From Fine Arts to ABA: How Chris discovered the field, fell in love with direct work, and built a company alongside his BCBA wife.
  • Precision Teaching as a Foundation: Why continuous measurement and the Standard Celeration Chart transformed his practice and outcomes.
  • One-Tier BCBA Model: What it looks like in action, how it improves traction and reduces burnout, and the trade-offs for scalability.
  • Scaling Outcomes, Not Just Hours: The intentional growth strategy behind Celeration ABA.
  • Parent Support: Inside The Autism Diagnosis Parent Plan—practical templates, scripts, and play strategies for families.

💡 Key Takeaways:

  • Precision teaching is a measurement framework that can be layered into any ABA practice to strengthen skill acquisition and retention.
  • A BCBA-led model can accelerate learner progress and reduce burnout, but requires intentional hiring, training, and workload balance.
  • Scaling doesn’t always mean more billable hours—sometimes the most important metric is client outcomes.
  • Caregivers benefit from structured, practical guidance during the often-overwhelming period after an autism diagnosis.

🔍 Keywords:
Precision Teaching, BCBA-Led ABA, Behavior Analysis, One-Tier Model, Autism Diagnosis, Parent Training, Standard Celeration Chart, Celeration ABA, Instructional Design in ABA, ABA Service Models

Connect with Chris:

Subscribe to the Podcast:
Don’t miss more inspiring conversations about innovation in ABA. Subscribe to In the Field: The ABA Podcast for insights, tools, and strategies to elevate your practice. Visit Sidekick Learning for more resources on fieldwork supervision and professional development.

Disclaimer:

BCBA®, BACB® [or any other BACB® trademark used] is/are registered to the Behavior Analytic Certification Board® BACB®. This website and products are not in any way sponsored by the BACB®.

All information and products are for educational purposes only.

Rethinking ABA Service Delivery: A BCBA-Led Model with Chris Topham

[00:00:00] Welcome to In the Field, the ABA Podcast. I'm your host, Allyson Wharam, creator of Sidekick, an online interactive curriculum and learning portal for behavior analysts. We specialize in providing a field work, supervision curriculum and continuing education for ABA professionals. In this podcast, we're going to deep dive into the world of ABA, focusing on quality supervision as the foundation of our field.

We're here for behavior analysts, business leaders, and trainees who are passionate about maximizing outcomes for their clients and improving the quality of their services with new and innovative practices. We're going to explore effective strategies and practices that not only enhance the quality of supervision, but also save time all while investing in the people who make up our field, our clients, our trainees, and your everyday behavior analysts.

So whether you're driving to your next in-home session or taking a break from your busy schedule, let's dive right [00:01:00] in.

Allyson Wharam: Welcome everyone. I am here today with Chris Topham of Celeration ABA and I'm excited to hear more about his story and how he is integrating precision teaching within his model and how he is really rethinking the way that services are delivered with a BCBA lead model. Chris, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your story in the field of ABA, and then what led you to found Celeration ABA.

Chris Topham: Yeah. Yeah. First, thanks so much for having me. I know we were talking briefly before we started recording, but there's so many people on your podcast that I admire, like Rose Griffin, Melanie Page, Patrick Faga, of course. Thank you for connecting us on here. And Amy Evans. It's an honor to be included amongst all those people.

I appreciate that. But yeah, I'll tell you a little bit about my backstory. I also like to ask that question of any BCBA I'm hiring 'cause it's always funny to collect those stories of how people fell into this field, which I very much did. My undergrad [00:02:00] is in art. I have a fine art degree. So yeah, not related at all.

And I was struggling with the fine art degree, trying to make ends meet and ended up taking an office job at an ABA company, not knowing what that was at all. I was scheduling or helping with RBT's, onboarding, and claims, which ended up being helpful starting my own thing later.

But, that was my first forte into ABA, having tried to start my own brand. I consider myself like an entrepreneur. I like to start companies. That one obviously failed the personal art brand, but here I am with Celeration ABA. But anyway, I fell into that and then kind of out of necessity, that company said, hey,

do you want to go out and shadow a BCBA and like RBT? Like you should probably know more about what you're talking about essentially. And that ended up being the light bulb that kind of switched everything in my life really. I had a teenage client, I remember like a 15-year-old boy and that BCBA, she was just amazing. I think he just wasn't used to seeing guys show up as therapists and was just like really excited. 

Allyson Wharam: A little different. Yeah.

Chris Topham: [00:03:00] Yeah. And so it was just really cool to see what the BCBA was doing, how she was coaching the parent and the RBT that was there as well. So that was really cool. I think within the month I was signed up at ASU, I think you went to ASU that right? Yeah.

Allyson Wharam: I co-construct there. I went to FIT but I have co-constructed there.

Chris Topham: Yeah, my wife, she's also a BCBA by the way. She's also one of the co-founders of Celeration ABA. Yeah, Anna. She makes fun of me all the time. She's like, if you find something, you just make that your whole personality.

And I think that's what I did with ABA. I think it's served me well. In many areas, like it's I find this thing, there's the spark. Yeah. BCBA, ABA, is awesome. And I just I go down this rabbit hole and I'm like fully committed. 

Allyson Wharam: I can relate to that.

Chris Topham: Last month she bought me a pasta maker for our KitchenAid and for the entire week or a couple of weeks, we were just eating pasta.

It's like you just make this whole thing, like all about this whole thing. But anyway, that's how I started in ABA. I can talk a little bit about how I founded Celeration ABA, if you want?

Allyson Wharam: Yeah. Yeah. I would love to hear more about that. [00:04:00] Yeah. Let's hear more about your origin story there.

Chris Topham: I think I did the same thing, jumped down the rabbit hole with like precision teaching, right around the time. I think in 2018, I was a BCBA since 2016. And if you look at my resume, thank God I have my own company now with my wife. 'cause I don't think anybody would hire me. It's one year here, one year here, just bouncing around, not finding right fit.

Mostly because I had found precision teaching through Amy Evans and all of her amazing stuff, and just no company really wanted to adopt it or felt like I wasn't finding the right fit for me. And then COVID happened, and so 2020ish, I was still like bouncing around from companies.

My wife and I are at home. It's before we have a son. He's two years old now, but so it's before he was born, we had this free time. And of course I threw myself into like sourdough baking and things like that. But like really that's when we started coming with the idea of that, like we could do online tutoring, and I should say I, for the year of 2020, I was a teacher at Morningside. You familiar with...

Allyson Wharam: Yeah!

Chris Topham: So they did all their instruction online that year, and I did their summer institute [00:05:00] program, and then they..

Allyson Wharam: That's been like a dream of mine. Yeah.

Chris Topham: Yeah. So you said, you feel like you want to call yourself a precision teacher and you're not there. I feel like that's the rite of passage that like, once you've gone through that program. You're a precision teacher, but like also if if you're using the chart at all, you're a precision teacher. But I was a Morningside teacher and then, through support from Amy and some other mentors of mine just ended up starting, like I know she has flex academics, it was actually called Celeration Education, which I think sounds a lot more catchy Celeration ABA now, but we just since moved on from that.

But yeah, that's how we started in 2020.

Allyson Wharam: I'd love to hear more about precision teaching specifically. What led you and drew you to having precision teaching be the core foundation of your practice?

Chris Topham: Amy is a big help. Amy is my chart mom. I know in precision teaching, there's this chart lineage where you can trace your chart parents back to Ogden Lindsley eventually, and Amy taught me how to chart. Around 2018 when I was bouncing from company to company, I was getting very frustrated with teaching skills to what [00:06:00] I thought was mastery, essentially. 80% correct across three consecutive sessions or whatever, and then I would come back as a BCBA supervisor a month later and be like why aren't they displaying this skill now? taught it mastery and think I just Googled and found Amy's stuff online, like on fluency and mastery criteria, and once you learn about the chart you can't really go back. Once it starts click, it's almost this moment of oh man, I've been doing everything wrong as a BCBA my whole life. should have been charting from the start. And like I don't blame any BCBAs. I wasn't taught anything to do with the chart in my master's program other than to know...

Allyson Wharam: It's not even on the task list anymore.

Chris Topham: Yeah, exactly. To answer your question, I think it was just out of pure frustration of these things aren't teaching skills to the level that I want skills to be taught. Again, dove down this rabbit hole of let me learn as much as I can about charting and yeah it really is.

I know that you're somewhat familiar with charting, but like you just can't switch back to 80% correct across consecutive sessions. Once you've figured out oh, if [00:07:00] we teach skills to functional mastery, as in they're hitting a fluency range, or, they'll retain over time. You can't go back.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah, of course. And I know the core of it really is the measurement piece of it, but I think it compliments instructional design so well, and how you even think about what your pinpoints are and that component composite analysis piece and just the framework of how you're building those skills and building them on top of one another, I think is really wonderful.

As someone who, focuses a lot on skill acquisition and instruction and all of that, I think it's really critical.

Chris Topham: I think you know, along with that, one of the pieces that it's hard to get people to adopt precision teaching because they think that it's a whole brand new way of teaching 'cause of the name. But it's exactly what you said. It's a measurement piece, right? It's a way to measure continuously the behaviors that you're seeing.

It's not like we're saying like, Hey, we're gonna do this ABA session a little bit differently. You're doing precision teaching now. It's really, you're measuring the same way. You're [00:08:00] just not converting it to a percentage and putting it on a graph. You are graphing, charting, the raw data, right?

The frequency count or the duration or the latency, and looking at that versus hiding it a little bit in a statistic, that's the change. But yeah it's sometimes hard to get BCBAs on board with that. For sure.

Allyson Wharam: And let's revisit that in a second as we're talking more about your model, but most organizations in ABA rely on three-tiered model or so, a two-tiered model in most cases, not a three-tiered model. Where you have the BCBA and RBT are doing the direct intervention you are using a one-tier BCBA lead model for the most part.

Is that correct?

Chris Topham: Yes. We have one employee right now who we are calling like a behavior scientist in training. She's essentially an RBT who is, gonna pass her exam hopefully by the end of this year. So somebody very much on BCBA track. So yes, the way when that, that came out of like the necessity of our wait list is getting so long and we need to hire people. But yeah, essentially we just hire BCBAs as a one tier model.

Allyson Wharam: Tell [00:09:00] me more about that. What led you to that model, and then tell me more about how that's structured.

Chris Topham: We started Celeration education, we're doing online academic tutoring. And then it happened to be that like one of the clients I was tutoring is in, we're in the Bay Area, they're local, and we're like, Hey, you're actually a BCBA. We need ABA services too.

And this was, later in COVID where we could form a bubble all test together and be safe. But we had just then jumped into like me providing ABA, which I hadn't done for a couple of years because I had been focused on the academic tutoring side of things. And just seeing the growth, I think like just me or just my wife coming out or a combination of the two.

We could just see a learning happening so quickly and we just decided, hey, let's stick to this model. There's a couple of other companies here in the Bay Area doing it that way too. But it wasn't like a, Hey, let's sit down and write a business plan for we're...

Allyson Wharam: Yeah.

Chris Topham: Going to do a one-tier ABA model. And I think a lot of like smaller companies start like that and then they grow into we're gonna do the RBT thing. And we just haven't. The learning has been so [00:10:00] quick with only BCBAs going out. And there's probably a lot of reasons for that, but I think the biggest one is, and hopefully this is relatable to a lot of people, but when I was a BCBA, three tier, two tier BCBA, I would show up for an overlap, find a problem relatively quickly, whether it's like a problem I've created or the RBT or family or whatever, and then solve that problem somehow, train the staff and then go away for a week and come back and then just repeat that cycle.

But when it's, I've seen my learner on Monday, and now I'm coming on Tuesday. You can just grab traction and momentum so much more quickly. I know what I'm doing, I know what I should be working on. It's streamlined, right? It's much quicker to get to the goals that you want.

And I'm sure we'll talk about it too. It's not scalable in the way that like there's so many kids with autism and only so many BCBAs, right? RBT's are fantastic and they are so important to our field, but it's just the way that we've managed to see so much progress with this small group of families that we are working with right now.

Allyson Wharam: And I think that [00:11:00] is the core of a lot of that argument, right? There's so many BCBAs and so in order to serve the number of kids that are out there we rely very heavily on the technicians to really do that legwork and be in the field day to day. But like you said, there are so many benefits to being able to make those real time program modifications when you're there.

And then that's interesting that you talked about just being having that traction. Like you're not restarting every week when you go out or, however often you're going.

Tell me more practically, just kinda what does that model look like day to day in terms of if you're willing to share even service intensity and how that's balanced with this model.

Chris Topham: I get this question a lot from BCBA's who I'm interviewing, 'cause it's such a different system. They ask, what's a day to day? What does that actually look like? And the easiest way I can get BCBA's to wrap their head around that is by saying, remember when you were an RBT, like what your day looked like?

But you have autonomy too. You're gonna have [00:12:00] a morning client and an afternoon client most likely. Most of our BCBAs work between two to three clients total. But it's usually your morning block, and then your afternoon block, which is, the peak hour ABA client.

So you're always gonna have that. You're a BCBA, we like to give you as much autonomy as possible. You can reach out to families, reschedule... We do have a billable number that we're trying to hit each week, 'cause full-time salary employees. But if you can kinda, move all your sessions to hit your billable target Monday through Thursday, then you have, this extra time where you can work from home on Friday and things like that.

So there's much more autonomy around it. There's no scheduling department. I know that was a big thing when I was in RBT. You kinda have to go through somebody else. But also like on the logistics side of it. So we are private pay families, pay us directly for services, and then we submit them what's called a super bill at the end of each week.

Actually now we used to do it monthly, but we've just found the cadence is easier for weekly, but it can be adjusted by family. And essentially that's just a breakdown of here's the CPT codes that we build for the week, and then families submit [00:13:00] that to their insurance provider for reimbursement for our services.

We have been very fortunate in that like we're in the Bay Area, a lot of our families are coming from Google, Facebook large companies like that where they are getting the majority of that reimbursed. And then just internally at those companies, there's been so much word of mouth saying, hey, Celeration ABA is doing this different model.

And so it's just grown to where there's a huge need for our services around those companies. But that's specifically like how the billing system works.

Allyson Wharam: What are you finding in terms of that word of mouth? What are the things that are drawing clients to you and what are they noticing that's maybe different about your model?

Chris Topham: A lot of the intake calls and things that I get sent to me are families specifically looking for a BCBA. They're either tired of the RBT turnover. Most of them had three tier in the past and just find that they're not getting that traction. So obviously the RBT versus BCBA is one of the huge things that draws families to us.

But the other thing I think [00:14:00] is having somebody consistent show up. We're not like turning over RBT or BCBAs a lot. It's similar to what I said before, you can see the same person over and over again. It's almost like they're part of the family now. It's like a much better connection think that families are looking for.

So a lot of the times there's these internal autism groups that Facebook or Google or YouTube. A lot of the families are posting there to this network of families that are looking for services as well. I think, a lot of them are coming because they want the expertise that comes with the BCBA, but I think it's mostly them getting a little bit frustrated with the turnover of RBT's in their current companies.

Allyson Wharam: I totally understand that. And that's, that's great. I think when you can grow by word of mouth, that really speaks to your services and what you're offering. That's wonderful. And so in terms of the intensity and the number of clients that you serve, do you end up providing lower numbers of hours in general because you have a BCBA there all the [00:15:00] time.

Chris Topham: Generally, yes. I think the answer to that is yes. It's not like we're doing the 30 to 40, and I post a lot about this on LinkedIn, so I'm sure you've seen, but that large sticker number of 30 to 40 hours... I would say like high end is 20 that we see per client, but it's generally like one client around 10 hours and we're able to see progress with that. It's been an ongoing conversation. Especially when we're taking on clients from a previous three, tier two tier company. We look at their report as we all do when we're taking on a case and it's suggested 30 hours of RBT.

What's the conversion to BCBA hours? And I'm not saying one is better than the other. When you're doing it consistently, you're not getting the RBT. Turnover, like how many do we think? And it's really tough to figure out, but it's usually just we start with what's feasible for the family, right?

What do you actually need in your life right now? Not necessarily like what's somebody else clinically recommended and then we either scale up or down from there. I think that we're able to be quite flexible in [00:16:00] that not like having to send a six month off to an insurance company and justify the hours.

I think that we've streamlined a lot of that by doing the private pay out of network thing and another benefit for families is that we're able to be that flexible when it comes to scheduling hours.

Allyson Wharam: Absolutely. With that flexibility, and especially being precision teachers and whatnot, do you find that you have more flexibility in what you target as well with this model?

Chris Topham: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I think. It's one of the things that I almost forget 'cause it's been so long ago, but like having to justify to insurance that this is medically necessary was always huge frustration point for me back in the day. So I think yes, I think again, we try to give BCBA's as much autonomy as possible, but we have onboarding trainings and we want to involve the parents' values as much as anything else.

What do the parents actually want to work on? What's valuable for them, for their family versus let's just go through a checklist of assessments. I know I'm not saying that this is being a bad BCBA doing [00:17:00] this, but I know that insurance companies are looking for specific goal in the Vineland for example, does this tie to otherwise we're not gonna fund it. So yeah, definitely. I think we're able to be much more flexible there. We do, I will say we do still do the six month progress reports. In fact, sometimes we do quarterly. And we try to focus a smaller number of goals again, 'cause we're not stuck to a template from an insurance who we're trying to get funding from. So it's very much like this is a report for the parent. Let's choose 10 goals, let's say for this quarter, just because I was sick as a BCBA of getting this 30 goal report with things in it that said, we'll introduce next period. Just didn't get around to it. It's because the RBT forgot, or the BCBA forgotten, just like this constant churn of like high number of goals. I would rather us focus on like these 10 goals for this quarter and let's reevaluate at the end of the quarter, like in three months time and see are we still working on these goals?

Do we need to, so I, yeah, I'm much more flexible as far as what we're working on and timeline too. Like we're able to, I think, [00:18:00] be much more responsive.

Allyson Wharam: That's interesting. I hadn't thought about that. You have a lot more ownership over the process it seems like. What are some common misconceptions that you find in terms of either the feasibility of this model or the scalability of this model? As we talked about, you're certainly not going to be able to scale to the same degree as if you had RBT's, but what do you see in terms of misconceptions there?

Chris Topham: I think a lot of times people are talking about scaling billable hours, right? Or scaling product, like profitability of the company. When I think we should be looking at maybe scaling, I dunno, like outcomes I guess. Are the outcomes better?

Versus, are we, hitting, I don't know, a thousand hours amount or whatever is? Of course I said, everybody that we have is a full-time BCBA. They have a billable expectation, which I can share with you if you want me to, but...

Allyson Wharam: Sure. Yeah.

Chris Topham: So each BCBA is required to bill 20 billable hours per week.

Obviously we hire them for a 40 hour week, but that's a number that we played with below and [00:19:00] above, and just found that this is a manageable considering they have to drive and eat and live and, be a BCBA like time to think outside of, just like I said, showing up, fixing a problem, showing up, fixing a problem.

That's the number that we've landed on. As long as people are hitting that, it's not like we're trying to scale that up and up. I think we're trying to be intentionally slow about the way that we're growing the company. We have five BCBAs now, so still, relatively quite small.

And I'm quite intentionally trying to keep it that way and scaling the impact on having, really good BCBAs or BCBAs in training. Not like looking at the margin and saying how can we make this company more and more profitable? I think that's a misconception when it comes to ABA companies in general is we just wanna make this as profitable as possible.

And certainly I've been at, ABA companies before where that felt like the case and it feels like you're disconnected as a BCBA, I want it to be more of like investing in the BCBAs and scaling.

Allyson Wharam: I love that frame [00:20:00] of scaling outcomes and not looking at arbitrary numbers of number of billable hours or, whatever, because that might not actually correlate to impact for clients or families. So I think that's a great reframe. There are lots of people that do that model and that's wonderful.

But you do have a team that you are growing intentionally as well with that impact. That's fantastic. And I do think, it's not that companies don't, maybe you don't care about quality, but it is often, here are the numbers first, and then we're gonna think about the impact and how that like ripples out of that rather than starting with the impact.

And then everything else is a metric towards that. 

Chris Topham: Yeah.

Allyson Wharam: Speaking of outcomes, I'd love to hear how have you seen this model impact outcomes for families, but also I'm curious for staff and obviously the clients themselves?

Chris Topham: I think for families, I think faster trust or faster connection that you're seeing the same BCBA that you saw do the assessment is now showing up. Monday through Friday to do your [00:21:00] services. Certainly with the low turnover that we have, I think families, I think the outcome for them is faster trust.

We do send out like staff quarterly surveys and family quarterly surveys, so I have some anecdotal data that seems like people are happy and seeing that the progress is happening quickly. But, going to precision teaching that shows us how fast learning is happening and we almost exclusively across all of our learners use the chart now.

Like I said, it's hard to find a BCBA that's already charting when you hire them. So it's a process of switching people over. But that allows us sometimes to see how quickly learning actually really does happen on the chart in that we actually pay for two different data collection software systems because of this.

Like we have our regular percent correct graphing system. And we have our central reach, precision X, which is like the digital version of the standard Celeration chart. And so when I have a new BCBA who is reluctant to chart, which is all of them I generally set them up taking percent correct data like they would [00:22:00] with their normal goals.

And I say, let's take one of your goals that you're graphing on a percent correct graph and put it on a chart and we'll compare in our next one-to-one meeting that we have in a week or in two weeks. And then they can see this is showing you sessions, this is showing you calendar days and how quick learning is actually happening.

It's hard to find data that says our learning is happening quicker than if you are with an RBT, 'cause we're just not taking data in that way. But I think, when that light bulb goes off for the BCBAs that we do hire and we can switch them over to charting then that's data in enough for itself, for me, that shows that BCBAs are getting something out of this model as well.

Allyson Wharam: When you're talking about it clicking, like what is usually that moment or like, when do you see for them that kind of light bulb go off or that kind of conversion to, to really feeling like they're a precision teacher?

Chris Topham: I think it's different for every BCBA, but recently one comes to mind where because our other data collection system was showing sessions, across sessions, it was skewing the data slightly in their graph and when they were able to see it like spread [00:23:00] out because, it was like they worked on this skill once and then they had worked on it like a month later and not much learning had happened.

But if you looked at the percent correct graph, which I, it's hard to talk about this on a podcast. I know. 'cause just visualize in your mind it's a visual medium, but it was essentially like, oh, actually he's learning very slowly, we need to make a change here that we probably wouldn't have noticed.

So sometimes it's uncovering data patterns that you just normally wouldn't see because the percent correct graphs skew it so much with hiding the calendar days or, there's multiple different things that you can see on the standard Celeration chart that you just can't see on a percent correct graph.

So I think that's like a common light bulb moment once you can get a BCBA to understand that. But, multiple times in our sessions, I think more so than with charting. My learner, I'm seeing him every day and I meet with our BCBAs or my wife does on a weekly basis.

So we can check in and clinically say like, how's learning going? And I think more often than not, BCBAs are like he's learning so fast. [00:24:00] Like we're gonna have to come up with new goals. This is why we went to the quarterly goal report system because in, in six months, like we're generally not working on the same things that we were six months ago.

Because I think learning is happening so much quicker. We tried monthly and it just wasn't feasible. It's once you stop working on one report, you're starting on the next, and it just wasn't, it wasn't feasible. But, I think that reporting cadence in itself speaks to yes, there's this faster learning that's going on for most of our learners.

Allyson Wharam: That's terrific. And I'm sure for them, really impactful in terms of, it is very different being in front of a learner and seeing that, like getting that direct reinforcement, like that's, I think why for so many of us, we fell in love with the field is like actually seeing that real time impact.

And so being close to it, but also seeing some of those different things in terms of their skill acquisition.

Chris Topham: It's not for everybody. I think you either really wanna do that as a BCBA. That's why you fell into the field you fell in love with doing the direct work, but some [00:25:00] BCBAs and one is not better than the other, want to be a clinical director or regional director and kind of supervise and we don't have the opportunity so much to do that.

There's no leveled system. It's very much we're all BCBAs here, all doing the same work. We support each other via overlap sometimes if you need them. Or we have a Slack group or we have quarterly get togethers and there's a system in place for support.

But my point is there's almost like two types of BCBAs who want to continue doing the direct work. And that was me. It was like, the further up I go, the further away from what I love I'm further away. But then you have your BCBAs who want to do more of that supervisor role and to each their own. But yeah, I find it really rewarding. I still work with one learner myself as well as, doing all the stuff on the back end that it takes to run a business. But I don't think that I'll ever stop working with direct clients. It's a passion.

Allyson Wharam: And so on that note, like you mentioned you sometimes do overlaps and things like that. Talk to me a little bit about staff training and development and how you approach that when the BCBAs are the ones directly delivering services.

Chris Topham: [00:26:00] Again, I like to ask this question of BCBAs I'm hiring 'cause it's it's almost personal 'cause you're the BCBA that's out in the home. And if family has feedback for you, that's not like the best. Sometimes they, they want you to do something differently. It can feel very personal as a BCBA, 'cause there's no one to say " Hey let me go train the RBT."

Allyson Wharam: Yeah. It's you. Yeah.

Chris Topham: Yeah, I think, that's why we try to build in, like we have the Slack group that you can just always post messages in. We always have the weekly one-to-one meetings. With another BCBA, because also, it can feel isolating.

If you're out there as a BCBA, you don't see an RBT, it's just you doing your work. Like we've tried to find workarounds for that. And it's hard in the Bay Area because some of my BCBAs are in San Jose and I'm not. It's a big place with a lot of traffic to get to. 

Generally there's a lot of upfront training that we do when we hire a new staff, mostly because nobody ever has charting experience and we want to get that in early. But, you don't need as much as when you're training in RBT because most of them have been BCBAs for a while.

And like I've said before, we like to give them as much autonomy as possible. So here's your case. Like we may go over the [00:27:00] report together, but it's very much like a one-to-one. We'll just guide you through this is what I might do.

How would you write goals differently and we'll walk BCBAs through that, but like as much as we can, I like to back off and say Hey, if you're mostly familiar with the BB map and that's the assessment tool you want to do then that's up to you as a BCBA. But I think as part of providing as much autonomy as possible, you also need ways for them to reach out. And that's why we have those other things that I mentioned, like the one-to-one weekly meetings or the quarterly we try to get together all in person. Hopefully that answers your question. We try to do a lot of training upfront that's just around like logistics and charting 'cause that is a new thing for most people. But the rest of it, it's like you've been a BCBA. If you're a newer BCBA, then we might be a little bit more hands-on. Maybe you need one-to-one support on doing this assessment. Maybe you've never done a violin before and we'll walk you through it. But it's very much kind of a situational, depending on what you need kind of thing.

Allyson Wharam: Are these mostly newer BCBA's that don't have charting experience? Just outta curiosity. Or are you seeing it across the board?

Chris Topham: I think I've hired one [00:28:00] BCBA who had some charting experience and she was maybe a BCBA since 2021 or something like that. But like most of our BCBA's, I think are 2020 onwards. I think I am the only one that's like 2016, like way back in the day. I was thinking that to myself the other day too 'cause we are actively hiring and looking for BCBAs. Most of the time I think we're getting newer BCBAs because it's just a newer way of doing things in the field maybe, but like I also think that we would get older BCBAs who are burnt out from doing it the old way. So it's trying to figure out which ones are coming to us.

But it seems like most of them are like, 2022, 2023 onwards where you might need to do a little bit more support. But it's almost like, I wish that these options like this were available when I was trying to find... 

Allyson Wharam: Oh, yeah!

Chris Topham: ...a BCBA job in 2016, 2017. Now, I probably would've gone this route too. It's a newer way of doing things.

Allyson Wharam: I've been thinking about your student analyst as well and what that experience must look like in terms of the richness of being able to both work directly with [00:29:00] learners, but see how a BCBA also does those quote unquote unrestricted tasks. And the flexibility that they probably have around that.

Chris Topham: That was, again, created out of necessity, but it's something that I do want to continue. So we're actively hiring for those positions as well. And I think it serves purpose for our current BCBAs too. Some of them actually do still want to like, provide supervision. It's not my favorite thing to do as far as documenting supervision hours and supervising BCBAs, some people's favorite thing to do.

Yeah, my wife is particularly good about, observing and going out and making sure she gets all of her supervision and things like that. But yeah, you're right, like from their perspective, it's probably vastly different than a typical, two, three tier company where they're not seeing that thing. So I think that's, yeah, a huge draw for them, for sure.

Allyson Wharam: So we had already talked a little bit about outcomes and impact, but I'm wondering more specifically, is there anything related to burnout, or retention, or caseload sustainability that you have [00:30:00] found since adopting this model?

Chris Topham: So we came about our number of 20 to 22 billable hours as a result of kind of playing around with that number, like what can be, profitable, where a company, it needs to be profitable, but also manageable for BCBAs. That number we didn't just pull it out of anywhere that came from like testing and then figuring out what's possible as far as how happy the BCBAs are. We obviously meet with them regularly, but we also do the quarterly pulse meetings. And getting that feedback from them regularly I think really helped. And again, building into that autonomy, right? Like we have this number for us to be profitable and for you to have a life, we want 20.

I have some BCBAs that are like, hey, I want to do 30 because we built in a bonus system for anything over 25. And then they get more money, right? I think, having that choice as a BCBA is obviously gonna reduce your burnout. Like you're getting a little bit more autonomy if you really want to pack your days, you can.

But it's much more flexible I think. So from what I'm hearing from my BCBA's they really like that as well as the element of not having [00:31:00] to show up and fix mistakes, repeat that system over and over again. I think the mental load that takes. It's also just so much easier to just show up the next day and it's oh yeah, I did this yesterday. I have my notes. Let me just pick up and keep going. I think that is obviously a huge momentum killer, but being a BCBA who can show up and do the same work every day and just make progress, I think that's contributed to burnout in ways that, I don't know that it's measurable, but like a lot of our BCBA's are saying like, this is a huge benefit that I didn't foresee when I joined the company.

Allyson Wharam: You have a lot less variables, ultimately, a lot less people involved, a lot less back and forth communication and just those little things that I think we don't realize. Even when you're talking to a brand new BCBA. They see 30 or 35 billable hours and that seems like not a ton 'cause it's less than a 40 hour work week.

And then you see that actually translates to double that when you factor in everything else that you're doing. I am sure that is a great benefit.

I wanna shift gears a little bit. You have a new course. It's a parent course and it's [00:32:00] called, " Your child just got an Autism Diagnosis. Now what?" Tell me a little bit more about that. What need does that fill? What led you to create that course?

Chris Topham: Thank you for bringing that up. It's actually, we changed the name. I should have I actually, I much prefer the name you just said. But we did a little bit of like AB testing, just a poll on social media. And the one that won is " The Autism Diagnosis Parent Plan." That's what we're going with now. So the autism diagnosis parent plan is our online course. So my wife and I are both BCBAs, my wife's sister has autism. She received an autism diagnosis and we're already BCBA's.

So we like to think we know what we're doing and we just didn't, we were like still overwhelmed. We weren't really given a plan. It's just here's the diagnosis. Early intervention is important, but figure it out. So we the course out of the back of that. It's like a while you wait for ABA or help you find the ABA that's the right fit and speech and OT and all these therapies. I like to think of it as that stop [00:33:00] gap of easing the anxiety that you get after the diagnosis, before you're transitioning into therapies, which just didn't exist. I haven't seen anything that exists like that, but we wanted to make it like super practical.

So it has email templates that you can send to your school that says' my child has an autism diagnosis. We appreciate your feedback. Things like that. Just like a starting point. Like obviously you can edit those, but it has scripts for when you're calling your ABA provider. It does have like local ABA providers for the Bay Area. We haven't made it for obviously everywhere. You can take it if you're anywhere, but really I just wanted to make it super practical.

How to talk to providers how you can play with your child at home right now really easily versus trying to figure everything out is supposed to make a more of a step-by-step plan. And I should say that it's free. It's free. Right now we just want parents to go through it and test it.

It was calling it like the beta version of this course. So if anybody I know that primarily people that listen here are probably BCBAs, but if you have parents that are interested in something like that. Feel free to send them there. I'm sure there'll be a link, but it's just [00:34:00] CelerationABA.com/course and yeah, we just wanna get some families through it just to kinda get their feedback.

Also there's one-to-one coaching through it as well. They'll be prompted to schedule a call with me or my wife so that there's more of an individualized element to it as well. I think you get a couple of hours of BCBA coaching through it as well. It's just to fill a need that we felt like we needed even as BCBA's.

So I can't imagine if you're just a family that doesn't know anything about autism, how overwhelming that must be.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah I feel like I've heard that time and time again of just in talking to parents that they're just handed this packet with some links and resources and things like that and told look for ABA, but they don't half the time actually even know what ABA is, much less how to evaluate a provider.

And that's also one of many different services. So yeah, just navigating that or beginning to navigate that, I can see that too for, wait lists for example are so long, but ABA is only piece of the puzzle. And so what can you start doing right now to get your [00:35:00] child support?

Do you mind sharing a key strategy from the course or is there something specific that you really hope that parents or caregivers take away from the course?

Chris Topham: It's five video modules. I am still working on it. In September, it's probably gonna be ready for that first group of parents to go through it. So obviously if you're interested just sign up on there and you'll start getting emails about it for sure.

But I think the scripts and the email templates I think are like super high value. Like you can just use those right now. They're ready to go. But a strategy, I think I would talk about you probably do it already as a BCBA but the join, wait, add method that I talk about sometimes in some of my social media, it's essentially trying to teach parents a way to play, like how you can play with your child right now without turning it into a test or like feeling like you're behind or feeling like you need to teach something.

This is just from being a BCBA for almost 10 years and showing up and trying to teach parents just stop asking questions. Just stop talking. When you're trying to play, it's essentially [00:36:00] join, right? Just sit next to your child when they're doing something that they like. That's step one. And how hard that is for some parents is just unbelievable. You don't have to say oh, are you gonna stack the blocks? Or, oh, you're gonna make the horse go. Just join. That's step one. I'm like trying to get you in the door. You're next to your child.

And then add, you're just gonna add one thing. You're not necessarily gonna say anything. You're gonna do something different with the blocks, or you might narrate what you're doing. So you just say I'm putting the block on top. You just just add one thing.

And then wait, which is obviously the hardest step. It's just don't say anything. Don't ask a question, and if your child looks at you and you get some joint attention, or if they copy you, then, teaching parents to like, get excited about that. But it's easy for us as BCBAs, and it's probably something that we model and we do all the time anyway.

Maybe it has a different name. But I've just find to try and translate that to parents, just like this three step of join- sit next to, add- something, anything, and then wait- and see what happens. Like I find if I can get parents to do that for five minutes a day, it's a super [00:37:00] quick win for them and for the kid. You're just getting so much connection. And then building from there.

Allyson Wharam: And I know we just talked about a model that doesn't include technicians, but I am imagining technicians that is an effective skill if we're thinking about what are the core things they need as they're starting. Like you said, it seems really simple, but even just like that wait is incredibly difficult if you're not used to giving it or just constantly asking questions as we're talking about even building rapport, for example, in our RBT course. That's one thing we emphasize. That's really you're placing a demand or you're trying to take charge of this situation rather than joining them where they are. And that's really step one of entering their world before you, you start to add to it. So I think that's a wonderful framework.

Chris Topham: It is really so hard for, but like I've done it in person so many times. I've tried to frame it as I'm just gonna watch you for five minutes, and I count how many times they, I would call it attends , versus asks or something like that and just show the parents their data afterwards.

And I got some pushback from parents on that. It just wasn't the most [00:38:00] practical. So I've tried to now tweak it into this super easy system. We have a whole ebook around this too actually, if you go on the Celeration ABA website for any amount of time, it's gonna prompt you to get that ebook.

So it's all, broken down there with video examples. But I think for BCBAs who are primarily listening, that, that's probably something you do already. I think the key tool there for you guys is explaining it to parents in a way that they can digest that.

Allyson Wharam: And we'll link both of those things in the show notes as well so people have easy access to it. Where are you disseminating that? Are you like reaching out to pediatricians or, I know you mentioned some of those parent groups and, some of the companies in your area, but how are you getting those things into the hands of the caregivers and families?

squadcaster-9gcf_1_07-22-2025_140320: That is a great question. 

Chris Topham: We should be reaching out to pediatric groups. We should be doing more to disseminate it.

Allyson Wharam: That's what I think all the time with any marketing or dissemination on my end too.

Chris Topham: So it's obviously it's available for free on our website at least. Both of them are available for free. So actually part of our objective this quarter is to drive more people to the website, which we are measuring and using the chart to measure, which is [00:39:00] super cool. But that's just nerdy aside. But yeah, all of our families that we work with directly will get access to it. I have an email list of parents that's growing and they obviously always get, tips and emails from us about how to do these things. I generally share on there things that have gone wrong when I've tried to do it at home with my own toddler, 'cause it just never seems to go as planned when I try to do these things, I'm just like, I'm gonna try and video model with you and then it just doesn't go as planned.

Allyson Wharam: Yep. I have a 2-year-old also who I know exactly how that goes.

Chris Topham: We're trying to use that just to give some more video examples and more context of how we can do these things. So yeah, you're right, we should be sharing it more directly with people. But, it's on our website and it's emailed to all of the families that are either waiting for services from us or who have signed up to receive our newsletters and stuff like that.

Allyson Wharam: Yeah, that's fabulous. And I'm sure like word of mouth, it's gonna be a really valuable resource. And so that's already something that is working really well for you.

A couple more quick questions. I'm wondering, a lot of ABA [00:40:00] providers probably feel stuck in this traditional model of how we provide services and especially how we've really gotten pigeonholed in a lot of ways by insurance or just the norms of how we deliver services.

So, what advice or encouragement would you offer to someone who is feeling stuck?

Chris Topham: Yeah, like wanting to start your own thing and kind of get out of the... yeah. Encouragement. Do it. I think it's worth it, but advice certainly find somebody who's done it before, like a mentor situation. Of course, I'm happy to engage with anybody who asks me questions about that stuff.

But like I had Amy who had started Flex Academics and was able to help me on that end, getting that set up. And I had, some great BCBA mentors that were able to explain the out of network billing. I can just do all that by myself. So I think finding a network of people is certainly one of the best ways to go.

I would also say, going back to like AB testing, trying to figure out your business idea. It's hard to give advice, right? 'cause I don't know if somebody is wanting to start a [00:41:00] one tier ABA company or somebody is just wanting to contract as a BCBA on their own. And like any advice I give is not gonna fit nicely into everybody's situation.

But I will say it's a great idea to AB test as in post on your LinkedIn or post on your Instagram, I'm thinking of doing this or this? Which one do you think is best? I think a lot of the times, like I'll read marketing books, and people think that's a really complicated process to do, but before you sink a bunch of time into creating a one tier ABA company in the Bay Area, for example, it might be good to test that out with your potential audience and say, which one do you think would be better?

And then you, of course you have however many people voted. Those are your warm leads now, right? Like you have people to reach out to say, hey, what exactly did you have in mind or you have a potential audience there for your business. And I know that's not super practical, but I would say that would help anybody thinking of starting their own thing, just so you don't sink a bunch of time into something that's, potentially not gonna be viable down the line.

Definitely do it. If you look at my [00:42:00] resume, it's one year trying to figure things out and if you know you're not somebody who wants to grow and be a clinical regional director and you would rather do the work directly with kids then that's a viable path to go.

I know that there's a handful of ABA companies in the Bay Area that do a one tier. I'm not sure of other areas, but I hear about people contracting through different agencies, so there's other ways I think that you can do it without wanting to just, continue to be a three tier BCBA for the rest of your career.

Allyson Wharam: I think that's the power of our science. You can do just about anything as long as you, obviously, like you said, I think that's great advice to make sure it's viable. Is there actually a need there and starting with the need and working backwards? But, from that we have a really powerful science on our side. I should mention too we've mentioned Amy a couple times. Amy Evans. She was on episode one, for example, tutoring and academics and things like that, or Amy Theobold, which was a more recent episode, who's coaching students with ADHD in college.

Those are just a couple of examples, but there's so much out there that [00:43:00] even if it's not precision teaching or children with autism or whatever it happens to be. There's a lot that can be, break the mold and can even compliment. I think too, it doesn't necessarily need to be that if you have an ABA company that you stop providing services in the tiered model, but you might differentiate and diversify some of those funding streams as well too.

Chris Topham: It's almost endless... Like we, started off as a service and now as you said, we're transitioning into courses and products like eBooks. I think it's important to realize that, just providing direct ABA services is awesome, but there's so many other avenues that you could pursue.

But again, along with that, finding a mentor that's done it before makes it seem much less of a scary thing because it's one thing to talk about it, but like finding somebody who's willing to support you, I think is a huge piece.

Allyson Wharam: You'll get there eventually without a mentor, but a mentor can save you an enormous amount of time and mistake. They've probably made a lot of the mistakes that you might make, and so they can help you skip over some of that.

Chris Topham: And also you're gonna make more. [00:44:00] I'm somebody that doesn't like to make mistakes, but you're gonna miss make them more often than not you're just gonna learn from them. Yeah, that, that's a real fear. But yeah, you gotta, you gotta not be afraid to make them and learn from them and grow.

Like I said, this is my third company. I guess if you're counting Celeration Education and ABA as different companies, then yeah, I'm on my third one and hopefully this one sticks around. But as you can see we're, doing courses and trying to build an audience of parents who, who need the support outside of just like getting a BCBA in their homes.

So we're trying to diversify into other things as well.

Allyson Wharam: Terrific. Is there anything else that you wanted to add that we didn't get to talk about?

Chris Topham: No, I don't think so. Thank you so much for having me. It was a great conversation.

Allyson Wharam: And if folks wanna connect with you, where can they do that? Where can they find you?

Chris Topham: The Celeration ABA website, all of that's gonna filter its way to me. If you sign up for anything on there, you'll get my emails. It's @celebrationaba on Instagram as well.

And then I think how we got connected is LinkedIn, and that's through my personal LinkedIn. I [00:45:00] post quite a lot on there as well. So that's just my name, Chris Topham on LinkedIn. Any of those, and you'll get to me.

Allyson Wharam: Awesome. Thank you so much for being here, for sharing more about this. And yeah, I'm excited to see what you guys continue to do at Celeration ABA.

Chris Topham: Awesome. Thanks for having me.

Allyson Wharam: Of course.

Thank you so much for listening to In the Field, the ABA Podcast. Don't forget to visit our website at www.sidekicklearning.net for more resources, our comprehensive fieldwork supervision curriculum, and continuing education opportunities. If you enjoyed today's episode, please consider subscribing to our podcast and sharing it with your colleagues and friends in the ABA community. Your support helps us to reach and empower more professionals in our field. Join me next week to continue to explore innovative practices and foster quality supervision in ABA.