Often, when doing a consultation, I’ll hear praise for a particular person about his or her skill in working with a particular individual. People will say things like, “She is great with him” or “He knows him so well.” If you have a person like that, you can probably teach the child more skills and increase the amount of inclusion, and have less problem behavior. In fact, I’ve seen many, many situations where the child is able to do extraordinary things that wouldn’t be possible without the person who is “great with him” (GWH).
While having a person like that on the team has huge advantages, it also has some potential risks. What risks could there be in learning more academic and self-help skills, dealing with less problem behavior, and increasing great social interactions with peers? The problem is the GWH can hide difficulties that often don’t get addressed properly as long as they are there. For example, maybe the child doesn’t speak very clearly, but GWH understands everything he says, so improvement in speech clarity isn’t addressed. Or, GWH knows exactly when he needs a break to prevent problem behaviors, so the child never learns to independently ask for a break.
In all likelihood, the staff who is “great with him” won’t be there forever. Eventually, the child will need to function independently, or at least with different staff people. It is essential that we not let GWH’s cover up issues that are critical for us to address.
On the other hand, when BCBAs are concerned about this problem, they sometimes take the argument to the other extreme. Everyone should be able to work with everyone. We will do cross-training, we will rotate staff every hour, etc. Taken too far, this, too, will reduce progress. It takes time to build relationships, learn all the important details, provide training, communication, and coordination of activities, etc. Having different people work with the child is important, but it is easy to over-do it, and slow progress.
The answer is to understand why the GWH is so effective. If you analyze how the GWH works their “magic,” you get all the advantages of having that person on the team, and still program the skills needed for generalization and maintenance when GWH leaves. For example, if you find out that the GWH understands everything the child says, but few other people are able to do that, speech clarity should be targeted.
Often, a GWH can hide a large number of problems. The answer is not to keep the GWH with the child as long as possible, or conversely, introduce as many novel people as possible. Instead, figure out why the GWH is effective, and then use that knowledge to program for generalization in the future.