Growing autism treatment center opens new Middletown office
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Alisha Simpson-Watt founded Collaborative ABA Services, which provides behavioral health care to people with autism.
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Alisha Simpson-Watt launched Collaborative ABA Services in June 2019 with just herself and two behavioral analysts.
Now, with 24 employees and seeking more, Collaborative ABA Services just leased its first office, a 3,390-square-foot space in the Middlesex Professional Park in Middletown.
Treating a client base predominantly made up of people with autism, Simpson-Watt launched her business months before the COVID-19 lockdowns. Her staff began seeing patients in homes, then moved online during the start of the pandemic, but quickly pivoted back to in-person services when demand and needs skyrocketed.
“Even during the pandemic, we started out as essential workers,” Simpson-Watt said.
Simpson-Watt, 38, took the Middletown office so her growing company could add services, including occupational, speech and language therapy. Collaborative ABA Services is also launching daytime group activities so clients can work on social skills in a clinical setting.
“It allows a holistic approach, everybody is on the same page,” Simpson-Watt said of the new office.
Simpson-Watt is also adding case management staff, to help families in need connect with food, housing and other social services. Her revenue, which she declined to disclose, comes from a mix of contracts with schools, private insurance, Medicaid and out-of-pocket pay, she said.
“We definitely wanted to expand our services because we see a need for it,” Simpson-Watt said.
Simpson-Watt said she chose Middletown because there are relatively few applied behavioral analyst programs in the region.
She saw a need. It was much the same rationale that started her down the path to becoming a board-certified behavioral analyst.
Simpson-Watt was working as a social worker in Hartford Public Schools in 2012, and saw the district’s need for people trained to work with autistic students. Parents were having a difficult time accessing support through private providers and faced backlogs of sometimes more than a year.
Simpson-Watt already had a master’s degree in social work from UConn but went back to school and achieved a Board Certified Behavior Analyst graduate certificate from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology in 2015.
“Once the pandemic hit, it made it even worse,” Simpson-Watt said. “There was already a shortage of providers and a long waitlist. Now you were waiting even longer. You were getting staff burning out and resigning (throughout the industry).”
The company has a 60-family waitlist and is seeking to hire four behavioral technicians. Simpson-Watt plans to eventually add more board-certified behavioral analysts to help with the growing demand for ABA services.
She believes the demand is, at least in part, fueled by a growing understanding of autism and its increasingly frequent diagnosis.
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