To plan an online safety help-seeking goal in ABA, define the online event and help route the person wants, protect privacy and device access, and teach recognition without surveillance or victim-blaming. Separate routine concerns from imminent danger, exploitation, abuse, self-harm, medical emergencies, and reporting duties. Practice with safe fictional examples, then measure access, help-seeking, partner response, and whether the route actually protects the person.

Define events by observable features

Use unwanted contact, threat, pressure for money or images, impersonation, doxxing, scam cue, account takeover, self-harm content, or another concrete event.

Build a small scenario map with Lena, using the platforms and contacts relevant to her. Describe observable features, such as a stranger requesting a payment code, a known account suddenly asking for private images, a threat naming her location, or a login alert she did not initiate. Avoid asking her to infer a sender's intent when the safe action can follow from the message itself.

Separate uncertainty from confirmed harm. Lena can seek help when something feels wrong without proving that it is a scam, crime, policy violation, or emergency. Qualified platform, safeguarding, medical, legal, school, workplace, or emergency roles make those determinations.

Let the person choose help routes

Offer block, mute, report, leave, save limited evidence, contact a trusted person, emergency help, or another safe option while preserving Lena's communication.

Ask which options she wants for each situation and make the tool steps accessible. Blocking may stop contact but remove easy access to a message; reporting may share content with a platform; saving evidence may expose private material. Explain these tradeoffs in plain language and identify when a trusted person or urgent route acts first.

Provide more than one contact method and a backup recipient. Lena might use a short AAC message, forward a limited screenshot through an approved channel, or say “I need online help” without retelling the full event. The help route should work even when the account or primary device is unavailable.

Map urgency and authority

Predefine imminent danger, medical emergency, abuse or exploitation, mandated-reporting, law-enforcement, platform, school, workplace, and caregiver routes with qualified owners.

Create the escalation table with people who know the current jurisdiction, organization, and platform. State the triggering facts, owner, immediate action, information needed, privacy limits, and fallback. Do not collapse a platform report, a safeguarding report, and emergency services into one generic “tell an adult” instruction.

A real disclosure receives the required response immediately. Preserve Lena's words or communication as accurately as possible, explain what will be shared and with whom to the extent allowed, and avoid repeated interviewing. The ABA session does not investigate suspected exploitation or decide legal obligations.

Practice without creating harm

Use fictional accounts and images, avoid real exploitation content, protect credentials, allow stopping, and never require Lena to recreate or continue an unsafe interaction.

Design fictional scenarios that contain only the minimum cues needed to choose a help route. Use invented names, generic images, and test interfaces. Tell Lena the exercise is simulated and let her skip a topic, use a partner-only demonstration, or end the practice. Never ask her to open a harmful message or recontact a sender for data.

Keep passwords, codes, account histories, live locations, and intimate images out of teaching materials. If a real event emerges, stop simulation, protect immediate safety, preserve only evidence required by the qualified route, and document the handoff rather than scoring a trial.

Train partner response

The trusted person acknowledges, protects immediate safety, preserves only needed evidence, follows policy, avoids blame, communicates next steps, and respects Lena's privacy where possible.

Specify what the trusted person says and does. They acknowledge Lena, stop ongoing exposure when feasible, ask only the questions needed to choose the route, and confirm the next action in accessible language. They should not criticize her prior choice, demand the device without explanation, or promise confidentiality beyond what they can keep.

Train backup partners and sample their response. A help-seeking goal fails if Lena reaches out but receives doubt, delay, or a lecture. Record any missed response, overcollection of private information, or unauthorized sharing as a partner or system finding with corrective action.

Measure system performance

Report usable device and route, scenario opportunities, help choice, partner response, response time when meaningful, false alarms, distress, privacy cost, and Lena's confidence.

Readiness covers the device or backup, current contact, accessible message, and available responder. Lena's choice is measured only in safe scenarios she agreed to or real events after safety action begins. Partner response starts at the help message and ends with the designated protective step, not merely an acknowledgment.

Review whether the route reduced exposure, respected privacy, and remained understandable. “False alarm” should mean a qualified review found no covered event, not that Lena was wrong to ask. Track recovery, continued contact, account access, and her willingness to use the route again.

Build Lena's online help-seeking plan

Build Lena's plan around the help choices she wants available for defined online situations. For each scenario, list current platform tools, block and report routes, trusted contacts, urgent-safety escalation, privacy limits, device and AAC access, and the response each partner has agreed to provide. Use fictional practice with Lena's assent when applicable before considering any real-event review. Score Lena's selection and the partner's follow-through separately, and track uncertainty, false alarms, distress, privacy cost, and whether the options still feel useful.

Work through Lena's example

Lena selects three help routes for unwanted contact: block, platform report, and tell a trusted adult. Across six fictional scenarios, she chooses a planned route in five and marks one uncertain, giving 5 of 6, or 83.3%. The adult provides the agreed response in four of those five help trials, or 80%. The uncertain scenario remains visible for revision, and the partner denominator begins only when Lena selects help. Real urgent events still follow the applicable platform and safety routes.

Address Lena's main fit risk

Monitoring every message can remove privacy while failing to improve safety. Lena's plan teaches options and partner response without secret account access. A client measure can improve while privacy, access, partner behavior, burden, safety or lived experience worsens. Review those dimensions separately and retain useful supports.

Choose Lena's next planning action

The adult repairs the missed response, Lena revises the uncertain scenario, and the team verifies current platform tools before real use. Record the qualified owner, authority, affected person and setting, access or interim support, evidence needed, due date, client communication, correction route, goal disposition and next review. Software may coordinate workflow while qualified people make case-specific decisions within scope.

Apply current professional sources to Lena's goal

For Lena's goal, the BACB ethics hub identifies the current Ethics Code, which addresses client involvement, consent and assent when applicable, assessment, medical needs, risk, intervention, documentation and evaluation for covered people. BACB has no separate organizational jurisdiction. The BCBA outline is examination content, not practice authority. The CASP public summary gives high-level planning context for ABA treatment of autistic people. An evidence-based ABA framework supports integrating research, clinical expertise, client values and context.

Use implementation and access evidence for Lena

In Lena's plan, the treatment-integrity practitioner guide, Essig review, impact study, and reporting review support explicit procedures, representative implementation evidence and cautious interpretation. They create no universal participation threshold. Breaux and Smith offer assent-focused practice guidance while describing an evolving evidence base. ASHA supports continuous access to AAC tools or devices.

Close Lena's goal review

Review the online help-seeking plan with Lena, the responsible clinician, affected partners and the specialists named in the manifest. Preserve direct client communication, ordinary supports, disagreement, environmental duties, versions, decisions, limits and open gaps. Keep this page draft and noindex until the required clinical, client or family, AAC, access, digital-safety, privacy, healthcare, personal-care, nutrition, movement, civic, medical, safety, ethics and legal reviews are complete.

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