Whether you come for a single consultation, an assessment or an ongoing ABA programme, the thinking follows the same five steps. Every child, family and setting is different, so how much of each step is needed, and what it involves, depends on the situation. What stays the same is that you should always be able to see why a decision was made.
1. Assess and understand
Before recommending anything, Pooja assesses what is happening, when and where it happens, and what may be driving it. She listens to your priorities, looks at what has already been tried and considers what your child may be communicating.
The assessment is matched to the question being asked. For an ongoing ABA programme, it is a full ABA assessment, which may include a structured skills assessment such as the VB-MAPP or ABLLS-R. For a focused need, such as toilet training or one particular behaviour, it is a Functional Behaviour Assessment (FBA), which includes interviews, observation at home or school where that can be arranged, and records. Communication, sleep, health and sensory needs are considered within Pooja’s scope, and she will say when another professional should be involved.
2. Support
Strategies have to make sense where life actually happens. Often the most useful changes are to the situation rather than the child: adjusting demands, making routines more predictable, giving more choice or making it easier to communicate. Where it is needed, the written plan, such as a Behaviour Support Plan (BSP), also gives the adults around your child clear, shared guidance on responding calmly and safely in difficult moments.
Most of this happens at home, at school or in the community, where Pooja is not always present. The people there carry the plan day to day, so Pooja’s role is to make it clear and realistic, show people how to use it, and adjust it when it is not working for them.
3. Build
The purpose of support is a better life and more useful skills, not simply the disappearance of a behaviour. Goals may include communication, coping and flexibility, independence and daily living, play and joining in, self-advocacy and safety. Skills are practised with different people and in different places so they are more likely to last.
4. Measure
At the start, you and Pooja agree what progress will look like and how it will be recorded. Measures follow the goal: they are chosen because they answer a real question, and kept simple enough for busy families and staff.
That might be how often a distressing episode happens, how many steps of a routine your child does independently, or how many times they ask for a break instead of leaving the room. Feedback about wellbeing and participation counts too.
5. Adapt
If the information shows little progress, or life changes, the plan is reviewed. Pooja revisits the understanding and changes the approach. A strategy does not continue just because it belongs to a particular method.
What Pooja can and cannot promise
Pooja can promise how she will work: honestly, within her professional competence and the ethics codes she is accountable to, explaining her reasoning and reviewing progress openly with you. She cannot promise a particular outcome, rate of progress or timescale, because these depend on many things outside her control.
Those include your child’s health, needs and wellbeing, how consistently a plan is used by the people around them, and what happens in settings Pooja does not run, such as your home, a school or a care service. Families, schools and services remain responsible for day-to-day care, safety and their own policies. Pooja’s role is to assess, advise, plan, train and review.
Not every step on this page applies to every piece of work: a single consultation is very different from an ongoing programme. What Pooja will provide in your case, including any visits, plans, reports, training and reviews, is agreed with you in writing before paid work begins. That written agreement, not this website, sets out what is included.
Seeing progress clearly
Regular reviews show you what has changed, what has not, and what happens next. Ongoing programmes normally include access to a private progress record in HapMetrix, a UK data platform built for behaviour analysis practices. Goals, session notes, progress charts and key documents are kept together in one place, so you can see what is happening between reviews rather than waiting for the next meeting. It makes reviews clearer; the professional decisions remain Pooja’s.
An illustrative example, not real client data. It shows the kind of information families review with Pooja.