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.