Essential for Living

Essential for Living is a communication, behavior, and functional skills assessment, curriculum, and skill-tracking instrument for both children and adults with moderate-to-severe disabilities.  It is especially useful for learners with limited communication repertoires, minimal daily living skills, or severe problem-behavior. This instrument is based on concepts, principles, and empirically-validated procedures from Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and from B. F. Skinner's ground-breaking analysis of verbal behavior (Skinner, 1957).

Essential for Living is both an assessment and a curriculum, it is used to determine the current performance level of each child or adult with respect to skills that are part of the instrument, in other words, to conduct a curriculum-based assessment.  This instrument is also used to develop appropriate goals, and objectives for individual education or support plans and to track skill acquisition and problem behavior.

Essential for Living is not a developmental instrument and it is neither age, nor grade-referenced.  That is, it does not include skills arranged in an order in which they are often acquired by typically developing children, and sets of skills within in this order are not categorized by age or grade.  By contrast, The Verbal Behavior Milestone Assessment and Placement Program:  The VB-MAPP (Sundberg, 2008) is an excellent example of a developmental assessment, curriculum, skill-tracking instrument, and IEP development guide, which is also based on concepts, principles, and empirically-validated procedures from Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and B. F. Skinner's analysis of verbal behavior (Skinner, 1957).  The developmental levels in the VB-MAPP are also age-referenced.  

Essential for Living is composed of functional skills, and behaviors, which are essential for effective daily living and which result in an improved quality of life for children and adults.