When ending an ABA treatment goal, define accessible continue, revise, pause, retire, and stop options. Separate client preference from clinical recommendation, payer coverage, service authority, and urgent safety duties. Specify partner response, interim support, transition, records, and review. Measure option readiness, client preference, qualified decision, implementation, closure, burden, and experience.

Define endpoint options

Include continue, revise, reduce, pause, retire, stop, replace, or seek more information, with timing, reversibility, and Chandra's communication forms.

Explain each option through its practical effect. Continuing may retain the same procedure and review date; revising can change the target, method, setting, frequency, or success definition; reducing can lower intensity; pausing should preserve an explicit review point; retirement closes active teaching while retaining the record; replacement links the old goal to a new priority. Chandra also needs a way to say that she wants more information or that none of the proposed options fits.

Present the current evidence accessibly, including progress, burden, unwanted effects, generalization, maintenance, implementation quality, and Chandra's earlier priorities. Evidence that a goal is improving is relevant but does not settle whether it remains meaningful to her. Give enough time, privacy, AAC, and support for Chandra to ask questions or express uncertainty.

Separate decision authorities

Record client preference, clinical recommendation, payer action, service agreement, legal authority, safety duty, resource constraint, and disagreement separately.

The supervising clinician must make recommendations within scope, while consent, legal representation, payer authorization, school duties, medical risk, or another service agreement may create separate decisions. Name each owner and the evidence used. If Chandra wants to end a goal and the clinician identifies an immediate safety concern, document the specific concern, the least restrictive transition, the decision date, and the route for another review. Avoid relabeling an indefinite continuation as a safety pause.

Funding and capacity also need honest labels. A goal ending because authorization expires is different from Chandra choosing to retire it. Preserve her preference, record the external action, and identify any appeal, alternate service, handoff, or interim support. This keeps service constraints from being written into the clinical record as client choice.

Define what ending changes

List the teaching procedure, data collection, staff instruction, schedule, authorization, equipment, communication support, safety support, and related goals that depend on the goal. Mark which items stop, continue, or need qualified review. Ending measurement and ending a useful support are different actions. Preserve supports Chandra still wants unless an authorized decision addresses them explicitly.

Check downstream materials before the closure date. Remove obsolete instructions from staff plans and scheduling tools, tell relevant partners which procedure has ended, and protect the final data and decision record. If a communication aid, visual support, environmental accommodation, or safety tool remains useful outside the goal, assign an owner for its continued availability. A clean closure prevents an old procedure from continuing informally after the plan changes.

Make pause and transition concrete

For a pause, document the start date, interim plan, review trigger, maximum review date, and who may restart activity. For retirement or replacement, record the final data window, Chandra's current preference, open risks, handoff, and confirmation. A time-limited safety transition needs defined safeguards and decision points; it cannot become an indefinite continuation through an unlabeled hold.

Plan the first period after closure. State what Chandra and partners should do if the old situation occurs, who answers questions, which replacement support is available, and what signal would justify reopening review. Reopening should require a current, accessible discussion and qualified decision. It should not happen because a partner quietly resumes the familiar procedure.

Measure response and closure

Report accessible reviews, preferences, qualified responses, implementation, transition tasks, retained supports, reopened goals, burden, and experience.

Keep the review denominator distinct from the closure denominator. Track goals reviewed accessibly, client endpoint preferences, responses by the correct owner, decisions communicated, closure tasks completed, supports retained, and follow-up checks completed. Also report unresolved disagreements and pauses past their review date. Ask Chandra whether the result matched what she understood and whether any unwanted part of the old goal continues.

Build Chandra's goal-ending preference plan

Ending an ABA treatment goal requires one versioned preference plan for the quarterly review. Include direct communication, privacy, consent and assent when applicable, AAC and retained supports, authority, readiness, client and partner measures, missingness, experience, burden, decisions, owners, dates, and review triggers.

Work through Chandra's example

Across eight goal reviews, endpoint options are accessible in seven. Chandra asks to pause or end three goals. Qualified owners respond to all three; two close, and one enters a time-limited safety transition. Report 7/8 access, 3/3 response, 2 closures, and one transition separately. Keep every readiness state, client response, partner action, numerator, denominator, missing event, support, and experience measure visible. This fictional example supplies no universal threshold, legal conclusion, or outcome guarantee.

Address Chandra's main fit risk

Keeping a goal active because data continue to improve can ignore Chandra's current priority. The plan gives her preference a recorded disposition. Review access, partner behavior, burden, safety, and lived experience separately.

Choose Chandra's next action

The clinician reviews the transition with Chandra, closes two goal records, and checks whether retained supports remain available. Record the qualified owner, interim support, evidence, due date, client communication, disposition, and next review.

Complete a closure confirmation after the transition period. Ask Chandra whether the old procedure stopped as expected, retained supports remain available, and the replacement or pause matches what she understood. Reconcile any staff instruction, schedule, authorization, or data system that still lists the retired goal, then document the correction owner and completion date. Keep the correction open until every affected partner has received the current instruction and Chandra has an accessible way to report continued use of the old procedure.

Apply current sources to Chandra's plan

For Chandra's plan, the BACB ethics hub identifies the current Ethics Code, which addresses understandable communication, client involvement, consent and assent when applicable, assessment, risk, documentation, and evaluation for covered people. BACB has no separate organizational jurisdiction. The BCBA outline is examination content and supplies no practice authority. The CASP public summary gives high-level context for ABA treatment of autistic people. An evidence-based ABA framework supports research, clinical expertise, client values, and context.

Use measurement and access evidence for Chandra

For Chandra's measures, the treatment-integrity practitioner guide, Essig review, impact study, and reporting review support explicit procedures, representative evidence, and cautious interpretation. They create no universal experience threshold. Breaux and Smith offer assent-focused guidance in an evolving evidence base. ASHA supports continuous AAC access.

Close Chandra's review

Review the goal-ending preference plan with Chandra, the responsible clinician, affected partners, and the named specialists. Preserve direct communication, supports, disagreement, versions, limits, and open gaps. Keep this page draft and noindex until required reviews are complete.

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