Bermudian-born Shanyce Jones found her calling as a behaviour interventionist working summers in the Child and Adolescent Services department at the Mid-Atlantic Wellness Institute.

“While I was doing my undergrad, I would come home in the summer and work at Child and Adolescent Services. I started working with this one particular little boy who had autism,” Ms Jones said.

”I was really interested in helping him because he had different ways of communicating and just learning his different interests and what he liked. I was like ‘hmm, maybe I can do this as a career.’

After graduating from Warwick Academy in 2011, Ms Jones went on to complete her undergraduate psychology degree in 2016 at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax. Not long after, an opportunity presented itself to work with children with autism, and that sparked her interest in continuing in that field of work.

After enjoying that experience, Ms Jones decided to pursue a master’s degree in psychology while also specialising in applied behavioural analysis at Capella University in Minneapolis. Ms Jones graduated with a master’s degree in 2018.

Ms Jones’s area of expertise and focus has been working with neuro-diverse children and youth.

“Neuro-diverse is anyone who has autism, ADHD, anxiety, maybe depression or any kind of trauma. They experience the world in a different way, and they learn in different ways as everyone does. But they learn in a specific way and they need specific programming that will help them succeed in life,” Ms Jones said.

Four years ago, while working with a child psychologist in Canada, Ms Jones finally decided to take the leap into entrepreneurship.

“In 2020 and when everything shut down, I was previously working with a local child psychologist in Halifax, and she would refer me clients. She shut down when Covid hit,” Ms Jones said.

“And in the summer, in August, she decided she didn't want to continue with the programme, so I decided I could do it on my own. I have a master’s in psychology, so I opened my own practice, and that’s how it started,”

In 2021, Ms Jones opened her consulting service, Behavioural Connections, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her business offers a variety of services including autism evaluations, developmental assessments and behaviour analysis evaluations.

The goal of Ms Jones’s consulting services is “to support the development and wellbeing of children and families through a collaborative and evidence-based supported strategies, using a fun approach to therapy.”

“On a daily basis, I can go into a child’s daycare or we can go into their school if we are authorised and we firstly observe any kind of behaviours that we might see or that the teachers or parents have seen.

“And then from there we discuss any goals the parents might have — if they want their child to be sitting more or engaging with their peers — and work on those kind of things.”

“We then write a behaviour plan based on their goals and maybe once or twice a week we can go into their daycare and play out those programmes.”

“So, maybe if they want them to sit in circle time, we encourage them with different kinds of motivation techniques and evidence-based techniques to sit in circle time or engage with their peers,” Ms Jones said.

Having worked with neuro-diverse children and youth for a decade, Ms Jones highlighted the most rewarding element of her job.

“The most rewarding is seeing the changes in the child. So, if a child couldn’t speak when I first started with them, and now they are saying two or three words, that’s really rewarding because my hard work has paid off.

“Or, if they can communicate with their parents and ‘I want to play or I want juice’, that’s really rewarding.”

Ms Jones received the Black Business Initiatives Youth Entrepreneur of the Year award in November 2023.

“I was finally being recognised for my hard work and dedication to the field, and hopefully one day I can bring that to Bermuda as well,” she said.

“I’ve been doing some research with local daycares and anyone that works with children to see if there is a need for what I do with behaviour therapy. There is a need. A lot of parents have come and asked me, ‘My child needs some support; he can’t really talk or can’t communicate; does he have autism?’ I do autism assessment as well.

“I want to start coming in and doing some autism assessments and then building the business from there.”

Ms Jones is at present completing fieldwork to become a board-certified behaviour analyst.

“I’m completing it in Halifax, but I have a supervisor that’s in Texas. It’s under the behaviour analyst board of certification, which is in the US. You need about 2,000 hours in the field and research hours to be certified. Then you take your exam and you can be a board-certified behaviour analyst.”