Many professionals begin working independently after a few years in a clinic. The technical part is usually ready. The challenge lies in the rest: supervision, organization, documents, and pricing. This roadmap helps build a foundation that can sustain growth.

1. Training and supervision

  • Be clear about what your training and your professional licensing board allow you to do.
  • Maintain regular supervision with someone more experienced, especially for your first cases. Supervision protects the child and your work.
  • Choose the protocols you have mastered and are qualified to use. Copyrighted protocols require this proof.

2. Define your service

  • Target Audience: age range and profile of the child you treat well.
  • Location: at home, at school, in a rented office, or a combination.
  • Format: frequency and duration of sessions, parental supervision, school visits.

The clearer the service, the easier it is to explain to the family and to price.

3. Documents from the first case

Contract, consent form, authorization for image and recording use, child profile, and intake history. Having all this from the beginning avoids difficult conversations later.

4. Organize records

An independent professional is at once a therapist, supervisor, and secretary. Records scattered in notebooks, spreadsheets, and phones become a problem by the third case. From the start:

  • One single place for assessments, plans, and sessions for each child.
  • Records made during the session, not at the end of the day.
  • Graphs and reports generated from what has already been recorded.

5. Pricing

Calculate the price based on your total time, not just session hours: travel, planning, supervision, meetings with family and school, reports. Define rules for absences and make-up sessions and put everything in the contract.

6. First cases

Start with a few cases and do them well. Clear feedback and visible progress are the best source of referrals, both from families and from schools and doctors.

Starting with Proaba

Proaba offers a free account for 3 months, with up to 2 children and the ESDM and VB-MAPP protocols, no credit card required. It includes the complete workflow: assessment, plan with a goal bank, session data collection via phone, and graphs. Afterward, plans are per child, which aligns with the growth of your practice.