I recently had the opportunity to sit down for a podcast interview with Dr. David Cox and Jacob Sosine to discuss a topic very close to my heart: quality and outcomes in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). In our field, we often talk about "quality," but defining it and, more importantly, measuring it in a way that is meaningful for families, learners, and our teams is incredibly complex.
I have a long professional history of focusing on quality and outcomes in client care. The focus started during my direct work as an ABA technician over 20 years ago and matured throughout my career as a practicing BCBA-D and psychologist. Working as a practitioner alongside families taught me that every data point represents a real person and a real life. Early in my career, I realized that while we were excellent at tracking individual data points, we often lacked a "big picture" view of whether those skills were actually rolling up into a better life for the family. The first Mindcolor quality and outcomes report is a culmination of that career-long curiosity:
- How do we know, across an entire organization, that we are actually doing what we promised families we would do?
- Are we merely checking boxes, or are we fundamentally shifting the trajectory of a child’s life?
- Beyond the mastery of a specific skill, are we seeing a measurable decrease in the daily stress a family carries?
- Are we asking the hard questions about where we can do better, even when the data looks 'good enough?’
At Mindcolor, internal accountability is viewed as an organizational goal and as a responsibility we have to the community we serve. I greatly enjoyed creating Mindcolor’s first Annual Quality and Outcomes Report and the accompanying summary handouts. These documents represent our commitment to continuous improvement and the real-world progress of the children in our care.
Empowering Our Families
One of the most humbling aspects of this year’s report is the feedback from our families. We received a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 89, which tells us that the vast majority of our families are highly likely to recommend our services to others. Other details of feedback from our families demonstrated our continued commitment to excellence, including data points like 100% of families feeling their child is safe in our centers, 99% of families feeling their opinion is valued and included in their child’s treatment plan, and 95% of families whose children have discharged feeling prepared to manage challenging behaviors at home. We know that a positive experience for the family can lead to better outcomes for the child. Seeing that 90% of families feel our interventions are truly helping in their homes and communities drives us to keep our focus on generalization of skills and integration into real world communities during and after ABA intervention.
Measuring Growth for Our Learners
We also focus on measurable growth that enhances our learner’s quality of life. For example, this year, our data showed that after two years of service, learners saw a 4.3x increase in learning milestones compared to their baseline. At the same time, we saw a significant reduction in learning barriers, dropping from an average of 62.2 at the start to 27.0 after two years. These changes and others seen on various measures of adaptive functioning and skill growth represent children gaining the skills they need to be more independent and connected to the world around them.
Supporting the Teams: Thoughtful Workflows
I often say that to provide excellent care, our team members must be happy, engaged, and well-equipped. But as I mentioned in the interview, "quality" shouldn't be a burden that we just drop onto a clinician's lap. When we introduce new processes, such as outcome measures, we are incredibly thoughtful about the clinician's workflow. We ask ourselves: Does this make their job easier? Does it provide them with better feedback? We’ve made a conscious effort to keep our average BCBA caseload at 6.3 clients, ensuring they actually have the "bandwidth" to focus on quality and outcomes for their clients.
I am incredibly proud of our team's dedication to professional excellence: 97% of our team members pass their RBT exam on the first try, well above the national average. We held 14 exclusive CEU events in 2025 to ensure our BCBAs stay at the forefront of evidence-based practice. Additionally, our 94% employee recommendation rate and recognition as one of Glassdoor’s 2025 Best Places to Work suggest that our culture of support is making a difference for those who do this work every day.
Looking Ahead
While these reports celebrate what we have achieved, they also highlight where we can grow. As an example, in 2026, we launched the "Mindful Parents" resource. In the podcast, we discussed the "why" behind this and other family focused initiatives, like improved measurement of quality of life and stress. Our goal is to understand the holistic impact of ABA on a family’s quality of life and stress level and to ensure our intervention supports both the child’s growth as well as the family’s. I am a firm believer that ABA should reduce family stress rather than add to it, and at Mindcolor, we have refined our clinical model to ensure that support is a priority.
We use all of these data points to check in on how we’re doing so that outcomes reporting becomes a guide for continued progress. You can find the handouts summarizing our report on our website: www.mindcolorautism.com.
Thank you for being part of this journey with us.
Author: Amber Valentino, Psy.D., BCBA-D, Chief Clinical Officer at Mindcolor Autism