For people working toward a BCBA or BCaBA

My supervisor is leaving. Do I lose my fieldwork hours?

Short answer: the hours you have already had signed off are safe. Hours nobody has signed yet are the ones at risk, and that is the half to act on today. Signed-off hours do not vanish because your supervisor moves on — the certifying board allows for a fieldwork experience to be made up of more than one relationship, and lets you combine them in one application. What can be lost is a month whose form nobody signed in time. Everything below is from the Board Certified Behavior Analyst Handbook, updated 06/2026, and every claim names the page it came from.

What actually survives, and what does not

Two different things are often confused here. Your hours are recorded on monthly forms. Your fieldwork experience is the arrangement you had with one supervisor, or one organization, under one contract.

When a supervisor leaves, the experience ends. The hours do not. At the end of each fieldwork experience the supervisor and trainee complete a Final Fieldwork Verification Form for that experience, and the handbook is explicit that more than one of those can go into a single certification application to add up to the total you owe. A change of supervisor is a change of paperwork, not a reset.

One thing that surprises people: taking a break from accruing hours under the same contract also ends that experience and starts a new one. The board treats a gap the same way it treats a new supervisor.

The deadline that actually costs people hours

Every month of fieldwork is documented on a Monthly Fieldwork Verification Form, and the handbook sets a hard signing deadline: the form must be signed by the last date of the calendar month following the month being documented.

So a month of fieldwork worked in March has to be signed off by 30 April. If your supervisor gives notice in April, the March form is already inside its window and the April form will need signing during May — by someone who may no longer be at the organization, or answering email.

This is the single most useful thing to act on. If you know a supervisor is leaving, get every outstanding monthly form signed before their last day, not after. An hour of chasing now is worth more than any argument later.

Your contract already says what happens — go and read it

This is the part almost nobody knows. The board requires a supervision contract, and it requires that contract to spell out, in advance:

• the objective and measurable circumstances under which your supervisor will not sign your monthly or final forms;
• the consequences if either party does not meet their responsibilities, including proper termination of the relationship.

In other words, the situation you are worried about is one the board expected and required you to plan for on day one. Read your contract today. If it does not answer those two questions, that is the gap to close now, while everyone is still on good terms — not the day someone resigns.

If a supervisor will not sign

The board publishes a document specifically about disagreements over fieldwork verification form signatures, listed in the handbook’s own resources. If you reach that point, that is the named route — not a private negotiation, and not silence.

Two practical protections in the meantime. Keep your own copies of every signed form: the handbook requires both parties to retain them for at least seven years after certification, and “both” includes you. And keep your own running record of hours and supervision contacts as you go, because the board can audit trainees and supervisors at any time, and the documentation it asks for is the documentation you should already have.

If you are accruing hours in Ontario or Australia, the harder question is not your supervisor

The handbook carries a jurisdiction table that fieldwork guidance almost never mentions, and for two countries it changes the answer to this page’s question entirely.

Ontario. Residents can no longer apply for RBT or BCaBA certification at all, and those already holding one have had their certification “placed on voluntary inactive status”. For the BCBA and BCBA-D, the handbook states that Ontario residents can no longer apply as of 30 June 2026 — a date that has already passed. People who already hold a BCBA or BCBA-D in Ontario can maintain it.

Australia. Residents will no longer be able to apply for BACB certification as of 1 January 2027. Again, anyone who already holds a certification can maintain it.

So if you are in Ontario and accruing supervised fieldwork toward a BCBA, whether a departing supervisor costs you hours sits downstream of a larger question, and it is not one we can answer for you: ask the BACB directly what your accrued hours can still be applied to. The handbook does say plainly that existing certificants may maintain certification and reside in any country — the restriction is on applying from those places, not on holding a certification while living there.

What we do not know about your situation

We are not your certifying board and we do not adjudicate fieldwork. This page tells you what the handbook says; it cannot tell you whether a particular month of yours will count, and anyone who says otherwise without reading your forms is guessing. Verification questions go to the BACB. If your supervision sits under an employer, your contract with them may add terms of its own that we cannot see.

Special Learning does not supply fieldwork supervision. There is nothing for sale in this article.

Sources

Board Certified Behavior Analyst Handbook, Behavior Analyst Certification Board, updated 06/2026 — fieldwork verification forms and the monthly signing deadline; combining multiple final forms in one application; a break under the same contract starting a new experience; the seven-year retention requirement; the required contents of a supervision contract; the board’s audit authority; and the jurisdiction table naming Ontario and Australia. Read on 7 September 2026; the jurisdiction table re-opened at source on 9 September 2026.