When a child receives ABA therapy and feeding therapy at separate locations—different buildings, different providers, maybe even different days of the week—there is an invisible cost. Information lives in silos. Strategies developed in one setting are not automatically known in the other. A reinforcer that works brilliantly in ABA sessions may never make its way into the feeding therapist’s toolkit. And the behavioral patterns a BCBA documents during therapy may not inform how the feeding therapist approaches a difficult session. Parents end up serving as the primary channel of communication between their child’s providers, which is an exhausting burden on top of everything else they are managing.
At Autism Centers of Utah in Sandy, ABA therapy and feeding therapy operate in the same 15,000-square-foot facility, with therapists who communicate daily and share a coordinated approach to each child’s care. This is not simply a logistical convenience—it is a clinical advantage that produces meaningfully better outcomes for children with feeding challenges. Here is a detailed look at how these two therapies work together and why the integration matters.
Shared Foundations: What ABA and Feeding Therapy Have in Common
ABA therapy and feeding therapy share more conceptual DNA than most families realize. Both are rooted in behavioral science. Both use data to track progress and inform clinical decisions. Both rely heavily on positive reinforcement to build new skills. And both are fundamentally about creating conditions in which a child can approach something difficult—whether that is a social interaction, an academic task, or a new food—without being overwhelmed.
Understanding these shared foundations helps explain why integration between the two is so natural and so powerful.
Positive Reinforcement: A Tool Both Therapies Use in Coordination
Positive reinforcement is the cornerstone of ABA therapy. When a child performs a target behavior, they receive something they find rewarding—access to a preferred toy, praise, a sensory break, a token in a token economy—and that reinforcement increases the likelihood that the behavior will occur again. BCBAs at Autism Centers of Utah invest significant time identifying each child’s most effective reinforcers and calibrating how and when to use them to maximize learning.
In feeding therapy, positive reinforcement serves the same function: it builds associations between approaching food and positive outcomes. A child who touches a non-preferred food for the first time is reinforced. A child who tolerates a new texture near their mouth is reinforced. Over time, these reinforced approximations build toward actual eating of new foods.
When ABA and feeding therapists work in the same location and share knowledge about a child’s reinforcer profile, the feeding therapist can draw on exactly the same motivators that make ABA sessions effective. There is no need to guess what a child finds rewarding or to start from scratch building a reinforcement system—the BCBA’s detailed knowledge transfers directly. This means reinforcement in feeding sessions is more precise, more consistent, and more motivating for the child.
Structured Routines: How Both Therapies Create Predictability
Children with autism tend to regulate better in structured, predictable environments. Both ABA therapy and feeding therapy use structured routines deliberately—not because rigidity is a goal, but because predictability lowers the anxiety threshold and creates the conditions in which learning can happen.
In ABA therapy, sessions follow consistent formats. Activities have defined beginnings and endings. Transitions are signaled. The child knows what to expect, and that predictability supports focus and engagement. BCBAs use these structures to help children build tolerance for new demands without being overwhelmed by the unpredictability of the environment at the same time.
Feeding therapy uses the same logic. Sessions follow a consistent format: warm-up activity, food exploration, structured food interaction, and wrap-up. A child who has been in ABA therapy for several months already understands the language of structured sessions—what it means to start, to try something, to be reinforced, and to finish. The feeding therapist can build on that existing understanding rather than having to establish it from scratch. The child arrives at feeding sessions already familiar with how supported, structured therapy works.
Data Tracking: A Shared Language for Progress
Data collection is one of the defining features of ABA therapy. BCBAs at Autism Centers of Utah track behavioral data session by session—frequency, duration, accuracy, latency—to make evidence-based decisions about when to advance a skill, modify a strategy, or reassess a goal. This data-driven approach ensures that therapy is always responsive to what the child is actually doing rather than what the therapist expects or hopes.
Feeding therapists use the same data-driven model. Every session involves systematic data collection: which foods were presented, what the child’s response was at each step of the exposure hierarchy, whether the child progressed, plateaued, or regressed. Over time, this data reveals patterns—which sensory properties are most challenging, which food families are most accessible, which environmental conditions correlate with better sessions.
When these two data streams exist in the same organization, they can inform each other. If a child’s feeding data shows that they consistently struggle on days when their ABA schedule has been particularly demanding, the team can coordinate to schedule feeding sessions on lighter days. If feeding therapy data shows that a child is more tolerant of new textures when they have had sensory input immediately beforehand, the occupational therapist and feeding therapist can sequence their sessions accordingly. This kind of data-informed coordination is essentially impossible when providers are working in separate locations with no shared records.
Daily Communication Between Therapists
Perhaps the most underrated advantage of the integrated model at Autism Centers of Utah is the simplest: the therapists can talk to each other. Not through a formal referral letter or a quarterly progress report, but in the hallway, before a session, during a team meeting. This kind of informal, frequent communication is where the most actionable clinical insights get shared.
A BCBA who noticed that a child seemed dysregulated first thing in the morning can flag that for the feeding therapist before she walks into a session. A feeding therapist who observed a child making an unexpected connection between food and a preferred activity can share that with the BCBA, who may be able to build on it behaviorally. An occupational therapist who has been working on oral sensory desensitization can communicate exactly which stimuli the child is currently tolerating so the feeding therapist can calibrate her approach.
This kind of real-time, informal team communication is one of the features that families in Sandy and the surrounding area cite most often when they describe why they chose Autism Centers of Utah. When all of their child’s therapists know each other, talk regularly, and are literally working in the same building, parents can feel that instead of managing a fragmented system, their child is supported by an actual team.
The OT-Feeding Therapy Connection
Occupational therapy and feeding therapy have an especially close relationship at Autism Centers of Utah, because many of the sensory processing challenges that drive feeding difficulties are directly addressed through OT. A child whose tactile hypersensitivity makes certain textures unbearable is working on exactly that hypersensitivity in occupational therapy—and those OT gains directly support what the feeding therapist is working toward.
OTs at Autism Centers of Utah address sensory regulation, fine motor skills, and daily living activities. When it comes to feeding, they may work on building tolerance for tactile input through sensory play, strengthening the oral motor muscles used in chewing, and helping children develop the self-regulation skills needed to stay at a table through a challenging sensory experience. The feeding therapist builds on this foundation in every session, knowing exactly where the OT has been working and how far the child’s sensory tolerance currently extends.
Why Separate Providers Produce Slower Progress
It is worth being specific about what is lost when feeding therapy and ABA therapy happen at separate locations. The coordination gaps are real and they matter:
- Reinforcers identified in ABA may never be communicated to the feeding therapist, reducing the effectiveness of reinforcement in feeding sessions
- Behavioral strategies that work in one setting may conflict with approaches used in the other, creating confusion for the child
- Progress in sensory tolerance through OT may not be incorporated into feeding therapy goals because the providers do not share information regularly
- Parents carry the full burden of communicating between providers, which is time-consuming and leads to information gaps
- Data from different providers exists in different systems and cannot be analyzed together to identify cross-setting patterns
None of these problems is insurmountable when providers are committed to communication. But they require significant effort to bridge, and in practice many families find that the coordination simply does not happen as consistently as it should. The integrated model eliminates most of these gaps structurally rather than relying on individual effort to compensate for them.
What Families Can Expect from Integrated Care
Families who bring their child to Autism Centers of Utah for both ABA and feeding therapy can expect that their child’s care team is functioning as a team—not as a collection of individual specialists who happen to see the same child. Treatment plans are coordinated. Goals are aligned. Communication is ongoing. Parents receive consistent guidance rather than conflicting advice from providers who have not compared notes.
The practical experience of this integration is visible from the beginning. During intake, the feeding therapist reviews the child’s ABA profile. Goals developed for feeding therapy are shared with the BCBA. When a child makes progress in one area, the whole team knows about it. And when a child is struggling, the team problem-solves together rather than each provider wondering why their strategies are not working.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can my child start feeding therapy at Autism Centers of Utah if they are already receiving ABA therapy elsewhere?
Feeding therapy at Autism Centers of Utah is designed for children who receive their ABA therapy at the same location, because the integrated model depends on daily communication between therapists. Families interested in the full integrated model would need to receive ABA therapy at Autism Centers of Utah as well.
Does ABA therapy alone address feeding challenges?
ABA therapy can address some feeding-related behaviors—particularly mealtime compliance and routine—but the sensory and oral motor components of feeding challenges typically require a feeding therapist’s specialized expertise. The best outcomes come from combining both approaches.
How do I know if my child needs feeding therapy in addition to ABA?
If your child accepts fewer than 20 foods, refuses entire food categories, gags or becomes distressed at non-preferred foods, or if mealtimes are causing daily family distress, a feeding therapy evaluation is worth pursuing. Call our team at (385) 417-3869 to discuss your child’s specific situation.
Is feeding therapy covered by insurance?
Autism Centers of Utah is in-network with Blue Cross Blue Shield and Utah Medicaid. Contact us at (385) 417-3869 to discuss your specific coverage before scheduling services.
If your child is receiving ABA therapy at Autism Centers of Utah and you are concerned about their feeding challenges, or if you are looking for a program that can support both, we encourage you to call us at (385) 417-3869. Our integrated team is ready to assess your child’s needs and build a coordinated plan that addresses the full picture.