Your child's therapist is losing a US certification. Here is what actually changes.

If you live in the United Kingdom, or one of the many countries where the Behavior Analyst Certification Board no longer takes new applicants, and your child receives ABA, you may have heard that the BACB is "leaving". Your child's therapist may have mentioned it. A parents' group may have passed it around with some alarm. This page is for you, not for the therapist, and it starts with the part that is most often lost:

Nobody's existing certification is being taken away. The board's own words: "Existing certificants may maintain certification and reside in any country." For the United Kingdom it is more specific: from 1 January 2026 UK residents may no longer apply, and "those who became certified before this date may continue to recertify." The change is about who can join, not about who must leave.

The dates, from the BACB itself

These are the board's own words on its international development page, which is where it publishes changes by country.

• United Kingdom — 1 January 2026. UK residents can no longer apply for any BACB certification. People certified before that date can keep recertifying. The UK Society for Behaviour Analysis is working toward national recognition for UK behaviour analysts through its own credentialing system.
• Canada (Ontario only) — 30 June 2026. Ontario residents can no longer apply for BCBA or BCBA-D certification from that date, and RBT and BCaBA applications have already closed with existing holders moved to voluntary inactive status. Those who already hold BCBA or BCBA-D may maintain it. The rest of Canada is unaffected.
• Australia — 1 January 2027. The BACB stops offering new certifications in Australia. This one was requested by the Australian association's own board rather than imposed from outside.

If you see a different date somewhere, including on one of our own pages, the BACB's international page is the one to believe, and it is linked below.

What does not change

Your child's therapist knows this week exactly what they knew last week. The training, the supervised hours and the years of practice do not expire because a certificate will be issued by a different body. Nothing about your child's programme stops on a date in January.

The methods do not change either. The research your therapist's practice is built on is the same research whichever board's name is on the certificate.

What does change, and the three questions worth asking

What changes is the paperwork behind the person — and paperwork matters here, because a credential is one of the few things a family can actually check about someone they let into their home. Three questions cover it.

1. Which credential will you hold after the transition, and by when? A good answer names a body — the UK-SBA, the IBAO, a national register, a local licence — and a rough timeline. "I'm looking into it" is an honest answer early on. No answer at all, a year in, is a reason to ask again in writing.

2. Who supervises you, and what will they hold? In many countries the person in your home is a technician or assistant working under a certified analyst. If so, question 1 applies to that analyst too, and their answer matters more than the technician's.

3. Does this change anything about who can be paid to work with my child? This is the practical one, and the answer is different by country. In Australia, whether someone may assess your child's behaviour or write a behaviour support plan is decided by the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, not by the BACB. If that matters to your family, ask your provider what their standing is with the Commission, and check the Commission's own guidance rather than ours. In the UK, where much ABA is arranged privately or through an education authority, ask your provider whether they have checked with whoever pays.

None of these questions is hostile. A provider who has planned for this will be glad you asked; that is rather the point of asking.

If you are choosing a provider right now

The transition makes an old rule more important, not less: choose the practice, not the letters. Our guides on how to choose an ABA provider and how to vet one were written to work in any country. The short version: ask to see the data they keep, ask how they train parents, ask what happens when something is not working — and be wary of anyone who promises a particular outcome.

Two free things help here, in any country. Our guide to who owns your child's provider walks through what you can check about a company before you commit — ownership, transparency, the questions that are public record — and it needs no account. Our free tools — the visual schedule maker, the social story creator and the rest — work from anywhere and need no account either.

If you want to talk it through

Some questions are specific to one child, one provider and one country, and a page cannot answer those. Our V-CAT program starts with a free 60-minute consultation with a BCBA, online, wherever you are. If your provider has gone quiet about the transition, or you are choosing between two, that is a reasonable thing to bring to it.

For the practitioner reading over a parent's shoulder

Tell your families before they ask you. A parent who hears "the BACB is leaving" from a forum hears something frightening; a parent who hears it from you hears a plan.

One caution worth stating plainly: continuing education is not interchangeable across bodies. Our courses are built and reported for BACB requirements. Whether any particular course counts toward the UK-SBA, the IBAO, a national register or a local licence is that body's decision, not ours — check their rules before you count anything. Our country pages and the UK transition guide set out the pathways as we understand them, and the BACB's international page is the source for the dates.

Where to go next

Your country's page in our international section carries the credentialing and provider detail for where you live. The UK transition guide is the fullest account of the UK pathways. And if the only thing you take from this page is the three questions above, write them down and ask them at the next session.

Last updated 2026-09-18. This page is general information, not medical advice. Talk with your child's clinician about your specific situation.