To assess belonging and social connection without popularity proxies, begin with Keo's own description of welcome, identity, comfort, contribution, reciprocity, privacy, and chosen relationships. Add observable access to invitations, roles, communication, mutual contact, and response. Friend counts, proximity, eye contact, group size, masking, or staff impressions cannot define belonging for everyone. Center Keo's report and attribute every proxy report.

Define belonging with Keo

Ask what welcome, recognition, reciprocity, shared identity, contribution, privacy, and enough connection mean to Keo. Preserve solitude and selective relationship choices.

Map chosen relationships

Record who Keo wants to know, maintain, greet, collaborate with, avoid, or keep private. Distinguish mutual relationship from paid support contact.

Observe access and reciprocity

Look for invitations, role access, communication response, shared decision, mutual help, follow-up contact, recognition, and repair while keeping context visible.

Record exclusion concretely

Describe denied entry, ignored messages, unavailable role, inaccessible communication, harassment, segregation, or another observed event. Route legal or safety questions to qualified owners.

Respect variable social needs

Frequency, duration, group size, and sociability preferences differ. Use Keo's chosen dose and experience rather than a normative popularity benchmark.

Build Keo's belonging and connection assessment

Create one versioned record for the cultural arts association. Include Keo's chosen activity, place, role, people, participation forms, communication, transportation, schedule, cost, environmental access, supports, partner response, privacy, health and safety routes, eligible opportunities, person-rated experience, invalidity, missingness, correction, action owner, and reassessment trigger. Store purpose-needed information with role-limited access. Pair person report with the exact opportunity, people, role, communication access, partner response, privacy, and outcome. Avoid inferring belonging from appearance.

Validate Keo's evidence

Reproduce 18 events, 14 with chosen connection opportunity, four without; among 14, nine connected, three neutral, and two excluded.

Connect Keo's evidence to an action

The association preserves Keo's chosen role, addresses two exclusion patterns, and creates a direct invitation route with the people Keo named. It avoids setting a target for more friends.

Work through Keo's example

Keo reviews 18 association events. Fourteen include at least one chosen connection opportunity. Keo rates nine of those 14 as connected, three as neutral, and two as excluded. Four events lack a chosen connection opportunity and stay outside that experience denominator. Preserve every planned and eligible opportunity, chosen participation form, access version, support, partner response, unavailable event, correction, unresolved item, and experience rating. This fictional example demonstrates one assessment control. It supplies no diagnosis, treatment effect, ADA result, Medicaid eligibility, HCBS compliance finding, safety clearance, coverage result, or outcome guarantee for Keo.

Address Keo's main interpretation risk

Calling 14 of 18 socially successful would equate opportunity with belonging. Counting contacts could reward unwanted interaction. The two exclusion reports require a specific access and partner review. Review selection, access, transport, cost, schedule, communication, environment, partner availability, role quality, relationships, privacy, health, safety, person priorities, missingness, and design strength separately. Attendance, duration, eye contact, calm appearance, task completion, unsupported independence, staff approval, or contact counts cannot establish participation, belonging, consent, safety, or quality.

Set the clinical scope for Keo

For Keo's belonging and connection assessment, the CASP public summary provides high-level ABA behavioral-health-treatment scope for autistic people. The current BACB Ethics Code addresses competence, client involvement, consent and assent when applicable, assessment, risk, data, documentation, confidentiality, and evaluation for covered people. The BACB outline is examination content. These sources do not establish a universal community goal, legal entitlement, funding, emergency authority, or permission to replace Keo's priorities with staff preference.

Protect communication across Keo's community route

ASHA's AAC portal says AAC users should always have access to their tools or devices. A 2026 systematic review of AAC research for autistic adults and children found heavy emphasis on requesting and variable study quality and generalization evidence. Keo's assessment should preserve communication during travel, arrival, participation, relationships, privacy, breaks, refusal, repair, pain, and emergencies rather than measuring only requests in a teaching session.

Center Keo's direction in participation

The federal Administration for Community Living describes consumer control through person-centered planning, supported decision-making, and accessible transportation, with individual preferences and needs driving community supports. This broad public framework supports asking what Keo values and which access conditions help. It is not an ABA protocol, payer rule, or promise that a particular resource exists.

Scope community-integration law for Keo

The Justice Department's community-integration page explains the ADA Title II integration mandate for state and local government disability services and the conditions described in Olmstead. Its effective-communication guidance covers relevant Title II and Title III duties and asks entities to consider communication nature, length, complexity, context, and usual method. Applicability, reasonable modification, fundamental alteration, and remedy questions require qualified legal or access review; Keo's clinical assessment cannot decide them.

Use CMS community sources within their program scope

CMS's HCBS community-integration FAQ discusses person-chosen interests, routines, relationships, transportation, natural supports, staffing, and annual plan review for Medicaid HCBS settings. The HCBS CAHPS survey page describes a cross-disability experience survey for adults in state Medicaid HCBS programs covering services, communication, choice, transportation, safety, inclusion, and empowerment. These sources offer useful constructs for Keo; they do not govern every ABA service or substitute for the exact state program, payer, measure manual, or individual plan.

Preserve Keo's urgent route

For danger or a medical emergency in the United States, SAMHSA directs people to call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room. The belonging and connection assessment should identify current emergency, medical, crisis, protective, and mandated-reporting routes for the actual setting. Routine data collection, payer contact, supervisor approval, or a planned session should never delay immediate safety action.

Choose Keo's next bounded action

Keo controls which relationships and experiences appear in the record. Reassessment follows Keo's request or a change in group, role, communication, access, or exclusion pattern. Record the qualified owner, evidence, effective date, activity and role version, access and support arrangement, privacy and safety route, implementation check, accessible explanation, disagreement or complaint path, and reassessment trigger. Preserve earlier evidence when the context changes.

Close Keo's assessment

Review the belonging and connection assessment with Keo, the qualified clinician, chosen supporters, community partners, access owners, and specialists named in the manifest. Confirm that chosen participation, physical presence, communication, access, support, partner behavior, clinical judgment, legal or payer action, safety, and person-rated experience remain distinct; every denominator is reproducible; AAC, privacy, basic needs, prescribed care, refusal, break, and safe exit remain protected; urgent needs received action; and conclusions stay bounded to sampled opportunities. Keep this page draft and noindex until every required review is complete.

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