Towards empowering support of parents of young children on the autism spectrum

Raising autistic children is not self-evident. Parents of young children
with autism are often confronted with daily challenges, resulting in
uncertainties regarding their roles and responsibilities in parenthood.
By a timely diagnosis and intervention, clinicians may provide some
initial guidance: sharing knowledge on autism and adapted parenting
practices is key to early intervention. However, lived experience of
other parents and insights from neurodiversity theory may give rise to
the question of whether such early intervention from professional
experts is doing full justice to the many layers of autism as a
phenomenon and the diversity of roles and responsibilities of parents
in particular. Therefore, this project's central question is how
clinicians can support parents of a young child with autism in their
multiple roles and responsibilities in an empowering way. First, we
aim to gain a layered insight into the roles and responsibilities of
parents of young autistic children from different perspectives. Using
qualitative methods, we will analyze perspectives from (a) the
academic literature on early interventions, (b) parents with lived
experience, and (c) neurodiversity scholars. Building on this layered
insight, we aim to co-create and test a group-based intervention for
parents of young autistic children in collaboration with an advisory
group consisting of parents, clinicians and neurodiversity scholars.