What are the opening hours?

Monday 8am - 6pm Tuesday 8am - 6pm Thursday 8am - 6pm Friday 8am - 6pm

http://www.smalltalkspeech.com.au/

SmallTalk Speech & Language Therapy, Hornsby (2026)

09/03/2026

07/03/2026

07/03/2026

I had the opportunity to have a dialouge with an ABA provider this week.

There was an attempt to collaborate, which I always appreciate.

It didn't take long for the elephant in the room to show up.

Here are just a few points where I cannot and will not be swayed.

1) ABA sells convenience to families desparate to support their child. The families are often just following 'doctors orders'. OTs are masters or doctoral level clinicians with expertise in sensory processing, activities in daily living and the neuroscience of behavior. Why would I ever refer to a profession where the practitioners only need 40 hours of observation to work with vulnerable children? The potential for harm is sky high.

2) Why would I refer to a profession where so many former clients have shared that they were harmed by the interventions? ABA keeps saying they've changed, but have you? Has operant conditioning changed? Has the 40 hour training requirement for RBTs changed? You haven't changed your profession, you've changed your labels, like 'play-based ABA' to make yourselves sound more humane...a theory that was created in a lab, tested on lab animals, then tried on vulnerable people. While I listed this as point 2 because that's how the points were organized in my brain for this post, this is THE MOST IMPORTANT POINT.

3) Putting aside the ethical challenge of calling an insurance company to find out how much a child "qualifies" for before ever evaluating the child, how awful is it to tell a family that your child 'NEEDS' 20, 30, even 40 hours of intervention, for YEARS, in order to 'fix' them.

Go away ABA. Just go away.

Let's change the legislation to include access to all science-backed therapies and technologies, not just behavioral therapy. Autism is NOT a behavioral disorder.

Let's educate doctors about the harms of ABA so they can provide true informed consent. ABA is rubber stamped, and the private equity firms controlling ABA LOVE THAT. Let's prioritize nervous systems over financial systems.

What I learned is that ABA thinks they're awesome. I also learned that they're really bad at reading the room, and they completely ignored that elephant. I think the ignoring was planned. They're really good at that.