PACT at the UK-SBA Winter Speaker's Series Conference

Both Zoe and Emma headed down to London in January to attend the 2-day Winter Speaker's Series hosted by the UK Society for Behaviour Analysis. This was the first in person event that we have been to since before the pandemic, so it was wonderful to get together with our colleagues, many of whom we have not seen for years! We also ran into a number of students that we have supervised in dementia care settings over the previous years and it was great to see how many of them are now fully fledged behaviour analysts working in the field!

There were so many exciting developments shared at the conference that are going to make a big impact in our field. Firstly, and most excitingly, the UK-SBA's register has now been accredited under the Professional Standards Authority's Accredited Registers Programme. This means that all registered Behaviour Analysts in the UK that work in health and social care are subject to the rigorous standards to meet the PSA. 

Furthermore, the UK-SBA announced their new certifications for Behaviour Analysts and their new curriculum and supervision standards for becoming certified in the UK. This means that we are now both UKBA (cert)s and will be beginning to use this certification as well as our BCBA-D certification going forward. 

Most excitingly for us is the new values-led competence framework which details the skills and knowledge required to be demonstrated to sit for the exam. This new system is based on showing evidence of competence in key areas rather than simply showing evidence of hours completed. This is an incredibly behavioural new system and we are excited to begin using it! 

Over the coming months we will be familiarising ourselves with the new framework, the documentation around it and will begin to offer supervision to aspiring behavioural gerontologists who want to practice in the UK. 

At the conference, we also heard Sheila Sekasi talk about racism from a behaviour-analytic perspective; a very interesting and important topic for us to consider in our work. 

We have a fantastic time in London and are thoroughly excited about the future of behaviour analysts in the UK!