Will my family be placed on a waitlist?
No. Believing is Achieving does not use waitlists. When families reach out, we respond quickly and intentionally, and services begin when you're ready.
What families face across Illinois
Waiting is the normal experience here, and it is worth naming why. Illinois has about 2,388 BCBAs certified to an Illinois address — 8.8 per 10,000 children, below the national average of 10.3, which works out to roughly 1,130 children per BCBA compared with 968 nationally (The ABA Index).
Urban Illinois waits for ABA commonly run six to twelve months (Get Started With ABA; Illinois Autism Insurance Coalition). That is a year of a childhood spent on a list.
Why we do not run one
Being in-home only removes the constraint that produces most waitlists. There is no clinic with a fixed number of rooms, so capacity is about staffing rather than about a building. We grow deliberately and hire against real demand instead of booking families into a queue and hoping the schedule catches up.
We would rather tell a family honestly that we cannot reach their area than hold them on a list for months. Our goal is to build the best, not the biggest, and a waitlist is usually a sign a practice chose the second one.
We also do not use a list as a soft no. When families reach out, we respond quickly and intentionally, and benefit verification runs in parallel with scheduling rather than after it, so the paperwork is not quietly adding weeks of its own.
What actually happens when you reach out
You speak with Mariah, the founder and owner, rather than a sales team. We verify your benefits at no cost and explain your coverage in plain language. We schedule your in-home assessment, review the findings and recommended goals with you, help you choose your therapist, and begin weekly in-home sessions. Services begin when you are ready.
The pace is set by your family and by the authorization process, not by a position in a line.