By Ann Luongo
When asked their reason for starting their company, Proven Behavior Solutions, in 2015, husband and wife Scott and Lindsey Snider agree that Scott’s niece, Taitum, who has autism, was a major inspiration from the start, and continues to inspire everything they do.
“I can’t help but see my sister in every family we come in contact with and her daughter in every child we serve,” Scott said. “The result is that all of our performance metrics, from clinical quality to staff training, are benchmarked against whether or not I would want our staff in my sister’s home and whether our team is good enough to help my niece.”
Headquartered in Norwell, Proven Behavior Solutions is primarily an Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and speech therapy outpatient healthcare provider that works with children with autism. It’s comprised of highly trained board-certified behavior analysts, registered behavior technicians, speech-language pathologists, and clinically-trained special education advocates, and serves Southeastern Massachusetts, including the entire South Shore and Upper Cape Cod regions.
In 2020, Proven Behavior Solutions was named to Inc. magazine’s prestigious ‘Inc. 5000’ list of the fastest growing companies in the U.S.
“The center-based program serves children ages 18 months to 6 years, and we also work with clients in the home from ages 18 months to 15 years,” Scott said. “We recently launched our Young Adult Program, which works with individuals with autism ages 16 to 26, both in the community and in their homes. Coming in 2021 will be two new clinical centers in Stoughton and West Bridgewater. The new centers will not only allow us to work with clients from Stoughton, West Bridgewater, and surrounding towns within the center, it will also allow us to expand our services in the home to those regions.”
A drive to raise the bar, and to ensure other companies are pushed to meet those high stan dards as well, is what keeps the couple going. The pair has made it their first priority to operate with the core values of integrity, dignity and humility.
“I saw firsthand how quality therapy could significantly improve the quality of life for the client as well as their family,” said Lindsey. “I also saw how many providers were choosing to cut corners and/or just not delivering the therapy as it was intended (e.g., not providing the amount of therapy recommended in all the research, not training their clinicians adequately, and not vetting their employees) and how the outcomes for those children were far worse. I wanted to be part of the solution and we wanted the kids in our community to have the ability to access the quality care that I’d seen provided elsewhere, but that seemed to be lacking in the South Shore.”
Proven Behavior Solutions offers clients Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), speech therapy and special education advocacy. In addition, they offer social skills groups for clients and training programs to staff and the local community. Their speech and language program is both offered to ABA clients as well as children without autism who are in need of speech services.
“Our Norwell center is our first clinical center, which opened in 2017,” Scott said. “We are excited to be opening two additional clinical centers this year (sometime in March/April) in Stoughton and West Bridgewater. For the past four years, we have had to turn away desperate families from west of Route 24 because we couldn’t ensure effective case support. Some of these families were coming from bad experiences with other providers; many had simply heard about the high quality of our programs at Proven and wanted their child to benefit from them.
“Now, thanks to these two new clinical centers, we finally have the ability to serve those families with the clinical quality and support their children deserve. Not only is this a win for our company, it’s a win for all the families in those neighboring communities that have been hoping for better access to care and high quality alternatives. We hope to open more facilities in
Plymouth and on the Cape in the near future.”
Any child with an autism diagnosis is eligible to receive ABA therapy through commercial health insurance or MassHealth. Unfortunately, ABA therapy isn’t a covered benefit for diagnoses other than autism under most insurance plans. Speech therapy is commonly covered without a doctor referral, and Proven also serves privatepay clients on a limited basis.
“Proven’s ABA model is highly intensive,” Scott said. “Clients typically receive between 20 and 40 hours of therapy per week, because that is