Who is working with my child?
Three different credentials may walk into your home, and they aren’t interchangeable. Here’s what each one is actually trained and permitted to do, the supervision the board requires them to receive, and how to check any of it yourself in about a minute.
Every number on this page comes from the BACB's own handbooks, stamped Updated 06/2026, read at source on 3 September 2026. Line references are given so you can open the same page we did. The board changes these on its own schedule, so treat the date as part of the fact.
The three people you’re most likely to meet
| Credential | What it takes to hold it | What they do with your child |
|---|---|---|
| RBT Registered Behavior Technician |
High-school-level education, a 40-hour training, an initial competency assessment, and a criminal background check. | Delivers the therapy hour by hour. An RBT implements a plan; they don’t write one and don’t change one. |
| BCaBA Board Certified Assistant Behavior Analyst |
A bachelor's degree or higher, plus behavior-analytic coursework and supervised fieldwork. | Works under a BCBA's supervision with more independence than an RBT, but still not independent clinical authority. |
| BCBA Board Certified Behavior Analyst |
A master's degree, behavior-analytic coursework, and 2,000 hours of supervised fieldwork (or 1,500 hours of concentrated supervised fieldwork, which requires double the monthly supervision). | Assesses your child, writes and changes the treatment plan, and supervises the RBTs delivering it. |
Why this matters in practice: if you have a question about what the plan is or whether it should change, the RBT in your living room isn’t the person who can answer it — not because they’re junior, but because changing the plan isn’t their role. That question belongs to the BCBA.
The supervision the board requires — and the number nobody prints
This is the most useful checkable fact on this page, and it’s rarely stated plainly to families.
“Amount of supervision. You must obtain ongoing supervision for a minimum of 5% of the hours you spend providing behavior-analytic services each calendar month.”
— BACB RBT Handbook, Updated 06/2026, page 16
So if an RBT works with your child for 80 hours in a month, the board's floor is 4 hours of supervision of that work in that month. That is a minimum, not a target, and it’s measured monthly rather than averaged over a year.
And the board is blunt about what happens without it:
“If you do not have a qualified RBT Supervisor or RBT Requirements Coordinator, you may not practice, and your certification will be considered inactive.”
— BACB RBT Handbook, Updated 06/2026
An RBT isn’t a credential someone holds on their own. It exists only in a supervised relationship, and a named, qualified supervisor is a condition of practising at all.
How to check a credential yourself, in about a minute
The BACB publishes a public lookup. You don’t need permission, an account, or your provider's help to use it: BACB — Verify BACB Certification. Search the person's name and you can see whether the certification is current, and its status.
Checked and reachable on 3 September 2026. If the link has moved by the time you read this, start at bacb.com and look for “Verify BACB Certification”.
Five questions worth asking your provider
- Who is the BCBA responsible for my child's plan, and how do I reach them directly? You are entitled to know which named person owns the clinical decisions.
- How many supervision hours did my child's RBT receive last month, against how many service hours? The board's floor is 5%. A provider who tracks this can answer it.
- Is the person working with my child certified right now? You can verify this yourself at the link above — and asking is normal, not adversarial.
- What happens to my child's sessions if their RBT leaves? Turnover in this field is real; the answer tells you whether the plan lives in a document or in one person's head.
- Who observes a session with my child, and how often? Supervision that never involves watching the actual work is a different thing from supervision that does.
One thing changing on 1 January 2027
If someone on your child's team is working toward their BCBA, the rules they qualify under are changing. From 1 January 2027 there are two BCBA pathways instead of four; the two that remain are an accredited or recognized behavior-analysis degree program, and a master's degree plus behavior-analytic coursework. Anyone who wants to be assessed under today's rules must have a complete application in by 31 December 2026. This doesn’t change anything about a BCBA who is already certified.
Where these facts come from
- BACB RBT Handbook, Updated 06/2026 — supervision minimum (p.16), entry requirements, and the requirement to have a qualified supervisor in order to practise.
- BACB BCBA Handbook, Updated 06/2026 — fieldwork hours (2,000, or 1,500 concentrated at double the monthly supervision) and the 2027 pathway change.
- BACB BCaBA Handbook, Updated 06/2026 — degree requirement.
- BACB certification lookup, reachable 3 September 2026.
We have deliberately not printed an average salary, an average number of therapy hours, or a success rate anywhere on this page. Those figures exist online, but none of them has a source we could hand you, and a number you can’t check isn’t information.