The landscape of autism therapy is facing a critical shortage of qualified providers, leaving countless families on long waitlists with limited access to essential services. In a bold move to address this challenge, Forta, a San Francisco-based startup, has raised $55 million to scale its innovative parent-led ABA therapy approach. This model trains parents to become registered behavior technicians (RBTs) and pays them to provide applied behavior analysis (ABA) therapy directly to their children with autism.
This funding round, led by prominent venture capital firm Insight Partners with participation from Exor Ventures, Alumni Ventures, and founders from companies like Warby Parker, Allbirds, and 23&Me, signals strong investor confidence in Forta’s disruptive model and its potential to improve care accessibility and outcomes.
What Is Parent-led ABA Therapy?
Parent-led ABA therapy represents a new frontier in autism treatment. Traditionally, ABA therapy—considered the gold standard behavioral intervention for autism spectrum disorder (ASD)—is delivered by trained clinicians such as RBTs and Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs). However, a significant shortage of these providers has left families struggling to access timely and consistent care.
Forta’s model trains parents to become certified RBTs through the Behavior Analyst Certification Board (BACB). Once certified, parents can deliver ABA therapy directly at home, creating a more accessible and personalized form of parent-led autism therapy. This approach enables children to receive therapy from those who know them best—their own parents.
Supporting Parents with AI Technology
To support this shift to parent-led ABA therapy, Forta provides an AI-powered technology platform. This tech stack assists parents and supervising clinicians by tracking progress, personalizing therapy plans, and ensuring clinical oversight. The integration of AI with parent-led autism therapy helps maintain treatment quality even when parents are the primary therapists.
Forta also compensates parents for their time, a rare but important step that acknowledges the professional effort involved in delivering therapy and helps make parent-led ABA therapy a sustainable model for families.
Overcoming the ABA Provider Shortage
The shortage of ABA providers has created long waitlists and uneven service availability, often delaying critical early intervention. By expanding parent-led autism therapy, Forta aims to alleviate this bottleneck, empowering families to bypass provider scarcity and engage in therapy sooner and more intensively.
Ethical Considerations Around Parent-led ABA Therapy
Despite its promise, parent-led autism therapy presents ethical and regulatory challenges. The BACB prohibits parents from being the RBT officially responsible for their own child due to conflict of interest concerns. While parents can become certified RBTs, they cannot legally serve as the primary billing provider for their child’s therapy, which complicates the model.
Nevertheless, Forta’s innovative approach is helping push the boundaries of what’s possible in parent-led autism therapy, emphasizing the importance of rigorous clinical oversight alongside parent involvement.
Investor Confidence in Parent-led Autism Therapy
Scott Barclay, managing director at Insight Partners, explained the significance of Forta’s mission:
“Families seeking autism treatment today face burdensome costs, offensive waiting lists, and undue hardships with few choices and little agency. Forta’s model of parent-led ABA therapy is a scalable, empathetic solution that gives families more control over care.”
The $55 million raised will help Forta improve and expand its AI-supported parent-led autism therapy platform and explore applying this caregiver empowerment model to other chronic conditions beyond autism.
Conclusion
Parent-led autism therapy is emerging as a promising answer to the nationwide shortage of ABA providers. Forta’s approach of training and paying parents to deliver ABA therapy, combined with AI technology, has the potential to transform autism care by making it more accessible, personalized, and effective.
As the company grows, it will be important to balance innovation with ethical standards, ensuring that parent-led autism therapy is both safe and impactful for families. With this substantial new funding, Forta is poised to lead the way in redefining how behavioral health care is delivered at home.
