We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Rebecca Urbano Powell a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Rebecca, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?
We have been incredibly fortunate in that our growth has occurred through word of mouth referrals. Almost every client we currently work with has been a direct referral from another family that is happy with our services which we feel is the highest form of compliment. Our families are “our purpose”. Every day, our team puts their heart and soul into providing ABA therapy services to our many, wonderful clients and their families and there is nothing greater than to see the positive outcomes that result from our collaboration with other providers and our families.
We are fierce advocates for our clients and families. As a Board Certified Behavior Analyst who has been fortunate enough to work within a school setting without limitations as to skill areas I was allowed to write goals and provide services for, I saw the amazing progress our clients made when I was allowed to treat them in home, in school, and in our ABA center. Unfortunately, due to insurance regulations and school district policies in Colorado, our families are often forced to choose between their child’s education and their medically necessary treatments such as ABA. This is negatively impacting our children and families, leading to slower progress in treatments as a direct result of not being able to attend the full dosage of the recommended treatment.
As a result, I joined the COABA (Colorado Association for Behavior Analysis) Public Policy Committee in 2021 and recently was elected as the Treasurer for COABA in 2022. We have been working very closely with Representative Froehlich on HB22-1260: Medically Necessary Treatment in School bill which would allow medical providers access to the school environment to deliver medically necessary treatments such as ABA, Feeding Therapy, and Augmentative and Alternative Communication, giving children the opportunity to receive both their full dosage of medically necessary treatment AND access their educational services. This will lead to improved outcomes both educationally and medically while also improving quality of life for our children by giving them time back in their day to engage in after school activities and have more time with their families.
Currently, our children either have to disenroll from public school and attend a private school that allows these services to occur on site or attend a remote learning school program in order to access their full dosage of treatment. Not all of our families have this option available to them because it is cost prohibitive and/or may require a parent to be at home full time. For our families that cannot exercise this option, they have to decide if they want to take their child out of school early every day in order to attend their medical treatments, thereby reducing their access to educational services and requiring parents to drive around town attending appointments which often interferes with employment. Their only other option is to reduce medical treatment to after school hours only which puts our children in the position of attending school for 30+ hours per week and then attending medical services for 10+ hours per week.
Imagine a world where a child with autism can attend a full day of school with their medical provider there to embed their medically necessary treatments into their school day. We would see children who make more progress than now; children who are happier and have more free time to just be children; and we would see children exiting these medically necessary services at a much more rapid pace, thereby saving the state a lot of money. This bill goes up for vote by the Educational Committee on April 21, 2022. I truly hope we all get to live in this world very soon.
Rebecca, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am the owner and Executive Director at Seven Dimensions Behavioral Health. We are an ABA provider and very soon, will also be a Day Treatment provider for our Colorado children that are not able to attend public schools due to the schools not being able to meet their needs.
I am most proud of the progress our clients have made in our program. There is nothing more rewarding than seeing them laughing and enjoying their therapy sessions with their therapy staff. We believe that learning should be fun and individualized to meet each child’s interests and needs.
What makes Seven Dimensions unique is our core values: Celebrate Differences, Integrity, Passion, Purpose, Innovation, Contribution, and Evolution. We believe that all humans deserve respect and dignity and that diversity is what makes us stronger as a team. We are committed to providing ethical, high quality services to our families and we absolutely love what we do! Our goal is to help our clients progress every single day using creative teaching methods that constantly evolve as we measure that child’s response to treatment. We value being a part of something larger; specifically, being an ally for our disability and neuro-diverse community.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
Our reputation is a direct result of our hard work and commitment to each and every family we serve. It is also a result of our ongoing investments that we make in our team. We believe that if we provide the best training and high levels of ongoing support to our team members, that they will in turn deliver high quality treatment to our clients and families.
Where do you think you get most of your clients from?
I jokingly tell our first ever family that they are our best referral source, which is true. I was fortunate enough to have this family referred to me by another BCBA that I know back in 2018. This family is still with us today and they have referred numerous families to us over the years. We are so thankful to this amazing family for their ongoing support. Their daughter has made incredible gains in ABA therapy over the past 4 years and we cannot wait to see where she will be in another 4 years!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.7dbh.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/7dimensionsbh/?show_switched_toast=1&show_invite_to_follow=0&show_switched_tooltip=0&show_podcast_settings=0&show_community_transition=0&show_community_review_changes=0
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/seven-dimensions-behavioral-health/mycompany/?viewAsMember=true