Compassionate Care Conference 2026

Hopebridge is presenting at the Compassionate Care Conference 2026.

Reducing Physical Management and Seclusion in a Pediatric, ABA Company via Application of Compassionate Care Practices

Friday, July 17th from 9-10EST in the Adirondack Room

In the last decade, a significant shift occurred in both literature and culture for a focus on “compassionate care”, “trauma-informed care” and assent-based practices (Rajaraman, A. et al., 2022; Jessel, J. et al., 2023; Ghaemmaghami, M. et al., 2024). While these hyphenated versions of ABA have arguably always existed, the increased focus has called ABA organizations to respond with significant changes to policies and procedures to reduce the use of physical management, seclusion, and compliance-based practices. This paper reviews the changes applied to a pediatric, ABA clinic setting to reduce the frequency of physical management and seclusion implementation across northern centers. While an in-depth review of data and methods of reduction will be reviewed during the presentation, of note is the addition of Practical Functional Assessment (Jessel, J. et al., 2016) and Skills Based Treatment (Slaton, J. D. & Hanely, G. P., 2018) resources for clinicians that correlated to a monthly average rate of physical management and seclusion from 123 instances in 2021 to 36 instances in 2025. Procedures and outcomes will be applicable to both individual clinicians and organizations.