At this present time ABA is not a state recognised service discipline in Switzerland. It is applied mainly in the area of EIBI (early intensive behavioural intervention) with children with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) and/or with children, adolescents or adults with ASD other developmental or behavioural disorders. To our knowledge there are no services in the other areas of ABA (see also ABA practice). Today there is a small number of BCBA’s (Board Certified Behaviour Analysts) working in Switzerland (see Practitioners). Currently all practitioners in Switzerland either work privately or bill their services via an alternative profession (e.g. medical/psychological services, special education, speech therapy). There are two centres that offer EIBI services for children with autism: ATZZ Zurich and OVA (see also Providers).

The following text is a summary of cited passages out of the article „Implementation of early intensive behavioural intervention for children with autism in Switzerland“ by Nadja Studer et al. (2017) to be found here:

Services for children with autism in Switzerland
Health services in Switzerland are provided by public clinics and hospitals and by private doctors and hospitals.
All 8 million inhabitants living in Switzerland are covered by a compulsory health insurance. Services for children with disabilities are organised within the public sector of the various cantons of the country. Screening for autism within routine paediatric check-ups in early childhood is not a standard procedure in Switzerland.
Unfortunately, many paediatricians lack the expertise to detect the early signs of autism and often advise parents, who are concerned about the development of their child, to wait and see how the child develops. This can lead to a rather late diagnosis and intervention for children with autism.

[…] There are very few specialised interventions available in Switzerland for children with an early diagnosis. Service delivery for children with autism depends heavily on where the family lives. Treatment for a preschool aged child typically consists of one hour a week of early special
education. In a few regions, up to three hours a week of early special education intervention is granted. Furthermore, one or two hours a week of speech therapy and sometimes an additional hour of occupational therapy is offered in addition to the hour of special education. Most of the professionals providing these interventions have little to no experience working with children on the autism spectrum. Those professionals that do have experience usually cannot take in new clients because they have long waiting lists. According to the recent parent – based report both preschool and school aged children with autism receive non- specific treatments like speech therapy and occupational therapy because these are treatments that are covered by the insurance companies.

[…] In Switzerland, professionals providing EIBI are confronted with misconceptions and myths similar to those mentioned in recent reports describing the situation in other European countries and the US. ABA is not known as science, it is only known as a form of early intensive intervention for autistic children. ABA is still seen as equivalent to discrete trial teaching and not accepted by many professionals. Very few specialists working with young children with autism have training in ABA. Very little ABA is used in schools, most of the staff that are specialized in autism have training in TEACCH and the so-called Affolter-model®. The latter was developed in Switzerland and is based on the idea that autism is the result of a neuropsychological problem of perception. It is almost exclusively implemented in Switzerland. There is only one specialized school for autistic children in the German speaking part of Switzerland. This school does not use ABA either and does not have a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) or Board Certified assistant Behavior Analyst (BCaBA) staff member or supervisor. However, the picture exchange communication system (PECS), a behavioural intervention, is used by some special education teachers in classrooms and is sometimes used by early special educators and speech pathologists. There are only two certified PECS implementers in the country and both are not BCBAs nor are they non-certified behaviour analysts. The other professionals who have taken the basic PECS course do not have in depth knowledge of ABA either. Since many professionals using PECS in Switzerland have other theoretical backgrounds, they often do not use PECS the way a trained behaviour analyst would. PECS is often confused with TEACCH and is used to prompt the child’s receptive language skills or to talk about the child’s day. Systematic data collection is rarely carried out and the skills in systematic prompt fading are often insufficient so that many children are prompt dependent and are left without an effective form of communication.

[…] As of February 2016, there are only eight BCBAs living in Switzerland and a small additional number living either in nearby Germany or France and working with families in Switzerland.

[…] The Federal Social Insurance Office selected six centres in Switzerland to provide early intensive intervention. Not all approaches are behavioural, two are non-behavioural. In
two of the centres BCBAs are involved in the planning and implementation of the intensive intervention. In the other centres psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, special education teachers, language pathologists and occupational therapists are in charge of early intensive intervention.

[…] This leaves all the families living in the other cantons paying for over half of the expenses for early intensive intervention. The service providers try to assist the families in finding supportive associations that pay for at least part of the expenses. Since not every family gets a treatment place in one of the designated centres, parents have to look for a private EIBI provider and are left with paying the full cost of the intervention. In conclusion, despite many years of fighting for an adequate reimbursement of the high costs of EIBI and despite various court initiatives, the current situation of financing early intervention is still very unsatisfactory.

[…] Even though a lot has been done for a rather small number of children and their families, the early intervention project did not have the kind of impact we had been hoping for in Switzerland.

[…] Because EIBI is mostly not covered by insurance companies or the government, other Swiss centres have not adopted the model. There are very few private service providers serving families with an autistic child in Switzerland because parents have to pay the program themselves.

[…] Furthermore, the guidelines defined by the Swiss Federal Social Insurance Office are not meeting the requirements of internationally accepted guidelines in terms of credentials and training of experts supervising an EIBI program as set by the Behavior Analysis Certification Board (BACB) and defined in the practice guidelines for ABA and the treatment of ASD (BACB) designed for funding agencies to set their standards.

[…] Also in Switzerland, it would make more sense to set guidelines for supervision according to these international guidelines. Despite of the changes seen in the last ten years, treatment for a child with autism in Switzerland still implies a constant battle on all grounds for the parents. Little has changed in terms of dissemination and availability. (Studer et al., 2017)

References

Studer, N., Gundelfinger, R., Schenker, T., & Steinhausen, H. (2017). Implementation of early intensive behavioural intervention for children with autism in Switzerland. BMC Psychiatry, 17(1). doi: 10.1186/s12888-017-1195-4