Support for parents is an important part of treatment programs for children diagnosed with autism. Parent training programs have generally focused on prescribed goals in one-on-one training settings with measures directly related to the goals. Of interest here are the few studies that included collaborative goals, expanded measures, and group training. Benefits of such approaches include the establishment of natural communities of reinforcement and better understanding of the breadth of effects. The purpose of this study was to determine if a group coaching approach would be effective in changing a large range of parent and child skills. This experiment involved group sessions (presentations, discussion, video sharing, and problem solving) and three individual in-vivo coaching sessions. The intervention took place over the course of four weeks. Direct measures included a parent skills checklist and child target behaviors. Results indicated an overall improvement on most measures that maintained or improved at follow-up.

Improving family quality of life is an important goal when working with families of children with autism. Researchers have attempted to measure changes by developing indices of quality such as affect, stress, and confidence. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a group parent-coaching program on measures aimed at addressing quality: a) parent confidence, stress and affect ratings; b) child affect ratings; c) the frequency of coordinated joint attention (CJA); and d) parent report of satisfaction and efficacy. Over the course of four weeks, the coaching program involved group presentations, discussions, video sharing, and problem solving, and individual in-vivo coaching sessions regarding specific child skill development. Results from the five parent-child dyads suggested increases in areas associated with quality of life. Results are discussed in the context of quality themes and mixed methods research.

The purpose of this study was to address gaps in the trauma treatment literature related to the expense and inaccessibility of evidence-based interventions for children with disabilities who have experienced trauma. Another aim of this study was to provide additional support for a newly piloted intervention for children with disabilities who have experienced trauma. This intervention is known as Smart Start: Parenting Tools for Children with Developmental Delay, Social-Emotional Concerns, and Trauma. A non-concurrent multiple baseline method was used to determine whether there was a functional relationship between the intervention and children’s challenging behaviors for five caregiver-child dyads. In addition, three of five caregiver-child dyads were assessed for improvements in child PTSD symptomatology, positive parenting practices, parenting stress, and treatment acceptability. Results from visual analysis, masked visual analysis, and hierarchical linear modeling were mixed, but generally supported a statistically and clinically significant relationship between participation in Smart Start and improved caregiver ratings of children’s challenging behaviors. Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test did not show statistically significant changes in interventionists’ ratings of challenging behavior, but descriptively, four of five children were rated as improved. Reliable change index scores revealed statistically significant changes in trauma symptoms and parenting stress for two participants. Positive parenting practices improved significantly for all participants according to the reliable change index. The intervention was implemented with good fidelity. All caregivers found Smart Start highly acceptable. Future research with larger samples is warranted based on the extremely promising results of the present study.