Thread by @ekverstania

[THREAD] The movement to #BanABA in South Africa is gaining ground. We're now getting through to some of the right people in legislature.

One of the things we need (both locally and internationally) is to help people currently involved in selling, promoting, delivering and buying ABA services to make plans to move out before such bans come into effect.

If we don't start working on this now, we may meet with STRONG opposition, and even if we get the bills to pass, we may have a lot of people going underground or disguising what they do whilst pretending to not use behaviourist practices.

To move forward with an exit strategy that could become palatable to some providers, we'll be putting out a call for input from former ABA therapists and parents who pulled their children out of ABA, plus ABA survivors who are prepared to participate in formulating the strategy.

This was also suggested by one of the nonspeaking attendees at the #BanABA session at the Global Disability Summit (@GDS_Disability) in February 2022.

I'll be asking for input also from other roleplayers in the #BanABA movement, including the team at @AutCollab, @HennyKtweets, @NeuroClastic and @FDMorg.

If you don't fall under one of these umbrellas and you feel you can add value to THIS aspect of the campaign (i.e. help formulate a strategy to help ABA providers in South Africa get out BEFORE the ban kicks in), then...

...please contact us here via the form below; or if you're already on @AutCollab's mailing list, you will hear more about this from them once we've liaised with them.

autisticstrategies.net/get-in-touch/

Once we've formulated our approach, we're likely to create platforms and opportunities for direct engagement with current ABA providers who are prepared to listen.

Please note that I do not support 'ABA Lite', 'modern ABA' or 'new ABA'; so such engagement would not be about compromising in some way, like, "At least you're not the Judge Rotenberg Center, so OK". #BanABA

There are different considerations in North America and even the UK, where various forms of ABA are formally entrenched in government-funded systems (e.g. PBS in the UK's NHS), so the strategy for those countries would be different from the strategy for South Africa.

Also, the US has not ratified the #CRPD, so disability service providers there are generally not motivated to learn about how to align their work to comply with it. South Africa HAS ratified the CRPD, so therapists do need to implement it in their work.

For those who don't know, ABA violates the #CRPD.

Also important to note that there are people in the ABA industry in South Africa who have made veiled death threats against former collaborators, and who have attempted murder before, so this strategy needs to take into account such risks too.