background In order to provide the staff of four residential treatment groups in a childpsychiatric  clinic for Autism Spectrum Disorders (asd) with tools to improve the learning environment, an Applied Behavior Analysis (aba) training package was developed. Principles of Pivotal Response Treatment  (prt) (Koegel & Koegel 2006) were adapted to the residential facility and incorporated in the training. In  the clinic treatment is considered as a partnership between the clinic and the parents. Therefore a  parent group training was developed using the same principles and techniques as used with the staff.
aim To improve the learning environment in the four residential treatment groups in order to increase  child social initiatives. We also wanted to know whether the aba training package was adequate in  training the aba techniques to the staff. For the parents the aim was also to improve the learning  environment at home in order to increase child social initiatives. Another question is whether parents learn to apply the aba techniques in the aba parent group training.
methods The training package for staff consisted of a two-day workshop, live feedback and video  feedback during three months after training. In the training the staff were introduced with aba  techniques, as prompting, fading, shaping and reinforcement.For the implementation a multiple baseline design across treatment groups was used. The parent  group training consisted of eight group sessions and two individual sessions. In the group training,  parents were introduced with the same aba techniques as used within the training package for staff. In  the sessions the parents received video feedback.
results The first preliminary results of the training package and the parent group training will be discussed.
conclusion Is the aba training package and the aba parent group training a chance to empower staff and parents? We hope to give an answer to this question.