(LIVE Rejected 2025 – Dec 10 8pm EST) Essential Proactive Strategies: Supporting Adults with Mental Health Disorders and Disabilities

This webinar explores essential proactive strategies for supporting adults with mental health disorders and disabilities. Attendees will learn the significance of proactive approaches in behavioral assessments and how to effectively communicate their value to caregivers. The session emphasizes cultural responsiveness, client rights, and the ethical responsibility to “do no harm” while enhancing quality of care. Participants will also examine how to integrate client preferences, environmental factors, and social validity into treatment planning, collaboration, and progress monitoring. NOTES: Focused on creating and sharing resources for BCBAs who support the adult population, with an emphasis on caregiver training and dismantling ableist culture through compassionate, person-centered approaches

Learning Objectives:

• Gain an understanding of why proactive strategies play a huge part in the assessment process and how to explain the importance of proactive strategies to the caregivers.
• Behavior analysts will identify the responsibilities of maintaining professionalism in educating oneself in cultural responsiveness and diversity when developing effective proactive strategies for the adult person served.
• Rationalize how to act in the best interest of the adult person served, taking the appropriate steps in supporting client rights, maximize benefits and do no harm.
• Identify how four major components in proactive strategies are generated through client preferences, supporting environments, risks, constraints, and social validity
• Provide education on ways to manipulate the environment. Identify the process for collaboration in treatment planning for proactive strategies and progress monitoring.

Shanda J Your BCBA, Board Certified Behavior Analyst since 2019, Shanda brings over a decade of experience supporting adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities and mental health needs. Rooted in her journey from Direct Support Professional to Behavior Consultant, she now focuses on caregiver training, anti-ableism advocacy, and Organizational Behavior Management. Through her work at DOTMHA, Shanda leads with cultural humility and system-level insight—creating inclusive, person-centered environments that empower both clients and care teams.

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Focused on creating and sharing resources for BCBAs who support the adult population, with an emphasis on caregiver training and dismantling ableist culture through compassionate, person-centered approaches