To assess decision specific functioning without global capacity labels, define Xena's exact garden decision and examine information access, option comparison, communication, time, support, values, credible risk, and practical follow-through for that decision. Describe what Xena did under named conditions and which supports changed access. Formal capacity, competency, guardianship, and representative authority follow applicable law and qualified decision makers outside this clinical measure.

Name the single decision

State the membership choice, available options, decision date, consequences, reversibility, and person or body with implementation authority. Similar decisions still require a justified generalization.

Describe functioning as observed action

Record how Xena accesses information, expresses priorities, compares relevant features, asks questions, uses help, communicates uncertainty, and reviews the outcome.

Vary supports before interpreting difficulty

Repair communication, language, sensory, health, literacy, timing, privacy, trust, and supporter access. Record which change helped and which remained untested.

Keep formal determinations out of the score

Clinical evidence may inform a qualified process when permitted. It does not itself establish legal capacity, competency, guardianship need, consent authority, or the scope of a representative's power.

Bound every conclusion

Name the person, decision, period, setting, information version, support conditions, observed sample, missing events, credible alternatives, and next action.

Build Xena's decision-specific functioning assessment

Create one versioned record for the community-garden membership program. Include Xena's decision and authorship, information and option versions, communication access, supporters and actions, relationship and power, authority, privacy, credible risk, ordinary supports, eligible events, outcome, missingness, correction, change of mind, qualified owner, action rule, and reassessment trigger. Store purpose-needed information with role-limited access. Use behavioral descriptions tied to source and context: requested more time, compared travel, confirmed cost, selected a supporter, communicated a choice, deferred, or revised. Avoid labels such as good judgment or high functioning.

Validate Xena's evidence

Reproduce 18 decisions, 15 with complete access, 12 resolved, three deferred, seven resolved with chosen support, and five resolved without added support.

Connect Xena's evidence to an action

The team records that Xena used the complete information and selected supports to decide about membership. It makes no conclusion about unrelated financial, medical, legal, residential, or educational decisions.

Work through Xena's example

Xena encounters 18 membership decisions. Fifteen occur with the agreed visual schedule, cost details, site visit, and response time. Xena reaches a decision in 12 and defers three. Of the 12, seven include selected supporter help and five use no added help. Preserve the full decision cohort, prerequisites, support choices, authorship, authority, invalid events, open work, corrections, and outcomes. This fictional example demonstrates one assessment control. It supplies no diagnosis, legal-capacity finding, guardianship conclusion, consent authority, treatment effect, safety clearance, coverage result, or outcome guarantee for Xena.

Address Xena's main interpretation risk

A global score of 12 capable decisions out of 18 would include three access failures and would treat three valid deferrals as deficits. The evidence supports a description of this membership decision under these conditions. Review communication, information, option quality, supporter access and conduct, power, privacy, health, risk, time, implementation, authority, client priorities, and design strength separately. Speed, memory, unsupported independence, agreement, confidence, eye contact, calm affect, or a favorable result cannot establish authorship, consent, capacity, safety, or support quality.

Keep Xena's clinical scope explicit

For Xena's decision-specific functioning assessment, the CASP public summary supplies high-level ABA behavioral-health-treatment scope for autistic people, with licensed detail outside this page. The current BACB Ethics Code addresses competence, client and stakeholder involvement, consent and assent when applicable, assessment, risk, data, documentation, confidentiality, and evaluation for covered people. The BACB outline is examination content. These materials guide clinical practice within scope and do not create guardianship, consent, disclosure, payer, or emergency authority.

Protect Xena's communication access

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. For Xena, preserve decision, question, uncertainty, refusal, correction, privacy, risk, and relationship messages across any effective form. Communication support should expand access while leaving authorship visible.

Use supported decision-making sources carefully for Xena

The federal Administration for Community Living describes supported decision-making as person-centered help tailored to particular decisions, with trusted people chosen by the individual while the individual retains control. The Justice Department's less-restrictive-options page describes arrangements ranging in formality and intensity and notes that some states have enacted agreement laws. These pages support Xena's person-chosen, decision-specific design. They provide general information rather than a state-specific legal determination.

Separate support from legal authority for Xena

The National Council on Disability's 2018 Beyond Guardianship report describes supported decision-making as an emerging, less-restrictive alternative in which people use trusted help to understand situations and choices while making their own decisions. The report also states that no singular model exists and calls for further study. For Xena, use it as policy context. Current state law, court orders, professional scope, privacy rules, and the exact legal act still require qualified review.

Preserve access, assent, and urgent routes for Xena

The Justice Department's effective-communication guidance directs covered entities to consider the nature, length, complexity, context, and person's usual communication method. Breaux and Smith propose individualized assent and withdrawal procedures in an evolving literature; their framework is practice guidance rather than a separate BACB rule. For danger or a medical emergency in the United States, SAMHSA directs people to call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room. Xena's routine assessment cannot delay emergency, protective, or mandated action.

Choose Xena's next bounded action

A new assessment occurs only if the decision, options, information, access, supporters, authority, health, or risk changes enough to affect the conclusion. Record the owner, evidence, effective date, decision and information version, support arrangement, authority, privacy and safety route, implementation check, accessible explanation, disagreement or complaint path, and reassessment trigger. Preserve the earlier record when the decision or conditions change.

Close Xena's assessment

Review the decision-specific functioning assessment with Xena, the qualified clinician, chosen supporters, access owners, and specialists named in the manifest. Confirm that the person's decision, communication, supporter help, professional recommendation, representative authority, payer action, organizational decision, risk, and outcome remain distinct; every denominator is reproducible; communication, basic needs, prescribed care, refusal, privacy, change of mind, and safe exit remain protected; urgent needs received action; and conclusions stay bounded to the sampled decision. Keep this page draft and noindex until every required review is complete.

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