A membership designed for Licensed, Credentialed Neurodiversity-Affirming Therapists:
- Watch innovative, evidence-based, and neurodiversity-focused training on your own schedule.
- Each educational webinar recording includes the accompanying handouts and a certificate of attendance that most credentialing organizations will count as a professional development activity.
- Collective members can access on-demand recordings of all of the live educational events scheduled each year, (21 days after the live event) and Collective members get on-demand access to recorded educational events from previous years, too.
- Active vetted members may list their private practice in the Collective’s Online Directory. There is no fee to be listed in the directory. People are looking for neurodiversity-affirming therapists. Help them find you.
Licensed and/or credentialed ***therapists are eligible to join the Therapist Neurodiversity Collective if they meet membership criteria and agree to practice by our guidelines.
*** therapist (e.g. Speech-Language Pathologist, Occupational Therapist, Mental Health Counselor, Psychologist, etc.)
Evidence-Based, Neurodiversity-Affirming Therapy
- Get updates from researchers summarizing their latest work.
- Learn about contemporary research covering topics that aren’t widely known such as interoception, alexithymia, The Double Empathy Problem, Diversity in Social Intelligence. Autistic Masking and Camouflage, Monotropism.
- Learn how to conduct respectful, empathetic, neurodiversity-affirming assessments and write strength-based reports using respectful, identity-first language.
- Learn how to write therapy goals in co-production with clients and families that
- Improve the self-determined quality of a client’s life, based on the physical (sensory), emotional and psychological well-being wants and needs of the client, and not on “normalization”.
- Foster autonomy and teach clients to effectively protest, and to give or retract consent.
- Support sensory integration and processing rather than targeting tolerance and extinction.
- Foster autistic and other neurodivergent identities rather than training autistic masking through traditional social skills therapy approaches.
- Target self-advocacy, self-determination, and personal agency (and why these objectives are so important).
- Target self-determined client objectives that solve problems, meet needs, and achieve personal goals.
- Develop authentic, robust communication in the mode determined by a participant, leading to them meeting their needs, wants, and goals.
- Teach participants how to establish and maintain their personal boundaries and respect the boundaries of those around them.
- Learn why eliminating barriers and recommending and implementing environmental supports, modifications and accommodations are just as important as teaching skills.
- Learn why access to AAC is a human right, why AAC therapy must shift to focus on autonomy and authentic communication, and why AAC modeling is a best practice.
- Learn why training autism acceptance to family members, educators, and professional peers is vital.
- Learn how acquired neurodivergent patients have their autonomy violated by providers and why our practices must change.
Licensed and/or Credentialed Therapists
Annual Professional Development Membership – $149
Membership application is open to individual practicing therapists whose licenses and/or credentials can be verified online.
You may apply to become an official individual member if you meet our provider requirements (credentialed and/or licensed) and agree to uphold our ethics and values.
Practice memberships are not available.
Active Members, get access to
- All member communications from Therapist Neurodiversity Collective.
- Neurodiversity-paradigm-aligned on-demand education with accompanying certificates of attendance. This includes on-demand access to all past events as well as the recorded sessions of this year’s Live Events. (Active members receive on-demand access to newly recorded educational webinars approximately 20 days after each Live Event concludes.)
- Access to a carefully curated compilation of research studies, white papers, and scholarly articles arranged by relevant topic and associated with neurodivergent-affirming practices. Access is solely for use in non-commercial research and/or private study for general education knowledge.
- Opportunities to take action with us in human rights advocacy and activism campaigns.
- Upon membership vetting, list your practice on the Therapist Neurodiversity Collective’s online directory at no cost. Our mission is to supply free public access to neurodivergent-affirming therapists who agree to practice with our ethics and values.
The commercialization of neurodiversity trivializes what the neurodiversity movement is all about, limiting and silencing real activism, and distorting its message and its causes. Performative neurodiversity transforms advocacy into individualized, easily marketable products and services that shut down the real purpose of the human rights movement, turning the focus of neurodiversity onto the influencers, companies, or therapists themselves.
We choose people over profits, which is why Therapist Neurodiversity Collective strives to offer neurodiversity-affirming SLPs, OTs, and PTs access to high-quality, affordable professional development hours that effect meaningful change in our therapy approaches.
Therapist Neurodiversity Collective membership standards respect and uphold
- Human Rights
- Disability Rights
- Civil Rights and Civil Liberties
- CMS and World Health Organization (WHO) Patient Rights and Standards
- Medical/Hospital/Residential Patient Rights
- Student Rights
- Children’s Rights
- International AAC Rights
The use of ABA, behavioral-based, or compliance-focused approaches in therapeutic practices is entirely unacceptable to us, including:
- The use of ABA or behavioral/compliance-based models in therapy practices, and the use of positive reinforcement. There are better ways to address behavior and therapy.
- Therapy goals with outcomes of desensitization, tolerance, or extinction.
- Therapy goals or programs designed for neuronormative social or sensory outcomes (training autistic people to mask their sensory systems, monotropic interest systems, anxiety, etc.)
- Neurotypical social skills training. We practice differently.
Neurodiversity-affirming therapists reject compliance-based behavioral approaches or any form of ABA and do not provide therapy services for neuronormative social skills training. Collective member applicants agree to abandon the following treatment frameworks:
- Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Interventions (NDBIs)
- Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT; Koegel et al., 2016) – NDBI
- Early Start Denver Model (ESDM; Rogers & Dawson, 2020) – NDBI
- Joint AttentionSymbolic Play, Engagement, and Regulation (JASPER; Kasari et al., 2006) – NDBI
- Incidental Teaching (McGee, 2005) – NDBI
- Project Improving Parents as Communication Teachers (Project ImPACT; Ingersoll & Wainer, 2013). – NDBI
- PECS®
- ABA + relationship-based therapy (ABA used in conjunction with DIRFloortime, SCERTS, Hanen, or similar.)
- Verbal Behavior (VB)
- VB-MAPP
- The Lovaas Approach
- Pivot Response Treatment (PRT)
- Natural Language Paradigm (NLP)
- Discrete Trial Training (DTT)
- Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention (EIBI)
- Intensive Behavioral Intervention (IBI)
- ABA Derived Errorless Learning Therapy Models
- Intensive Behavioral Intervention (IBI)
- Positive Behavior Support (PBS)
- Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS)
- Relationship Development Intervention (RDI)
- Social Thinking®
- The PEERS® Program
- Social Skills video modeling with the intent for the Autistic person to mimic Neurotypical Social Skills, and mask Autistic characteristics
- Any neurotypical Social Skills training program that teaches Autistic masking or has goals for Neurotypical Social Skills outcomes
Applicants for Collective membership agree to uphold Therapist Neurodiversity Collective’s Ethics & Values
- Members are advocates for Disability Rights and Civil Rights
- Members are advocates for equitable inclusion, and unrestricted access to supports, modifications, and accommodations
- Members use ethical billing practices in all settings
- Members adhere to ethical sales of therapy/parent materials/apps/programs
- Members provide therapeutic programs that are respectful of neurodivergence, such as autistic differences and sensory processing differences, and address the individual’s specific needs as opposed to a diagnostic label
- Members practice with a presumption of competence and respect for personal agency
- Members apply a Strength-Based Approach
- Members are unapologetic in their opposition to the use of ABA, including Positive Supports and Positive Reinforcement (PBS and PBIS)
- Members use humane and trauma-informed approaches to Feeding Therapy
- Members provide access to robust AAC with core language, aided language stimulation, and modeling with no prerequisites
- Members respect Body Autonomy
- Members do not use Seclusion and Restraint in our Practices
- Members do not act as Social Skills Trainers/Interventionists
- Members practice with cognizance of the potentially harmful effects of social skills programs that promote masking
- Members will use no application of Exposure Therapy (any form of “tolerance” or “extinction”, in Vivo and Flooding, Imaginal), that potentially induces emotional distress, trauma, and PTSD. This includes ERP, DPT, sensory system desensitization, or any type of operative conditioning or respondent conditioning (behavior modification through conditioning)