Evaluation of a telehealth parent training program in teaching self‐care skills to children with autism

Abstract

Although a fundamental component of effective behavioral intervention programs for children with autism spectrum disorder is parent involvement, parents are often unable to receive adequate parent training from qualified specialists (e.g., BCBAs) due to obstacles such as cost and geographic location. One way to address this issue is to utilize telehealth technology to remotely teach parents of children with autism to be effective behavioral teachers for their children. The present study used iPad minis, FaceTime videoconferencing technology, and wireless Bluetooth ear buds to remotely deliver a parent training program to three parents of children with autism in the family home. Using a behavioral skills training-based program, parents were taught to conduct preference assessments and implement a graduated guidance teaching program to teach their children several important self-care skills (washing face, washing hands, and applying lotion). Results indicated that all three parents were able to accurately conduct preference assessments with their children after only receiving detailed written instructions. Parents, however, did not correctly implement graduated guidance after only receiving detailed written instructions. After parents received our parent training package that included instructions, modeling, role-play, and feedback procedures delivered via FaceTime, all three parents were able to correctly implement graduated guidance teaching procedures with near-perfect levels of procedural fidelity. After parents learned to use graduated guidance to teach the first self-care skill, all three parents were able to correctly implement graduated guidance teaching procedures to teach their children other self-care skills after only receiving detailed written instructions that explained how to do so for each skill. Furthermore, parentimplemented graduated guidance was effective in increasing independent completion of self-care skills for all three child participants. There are a number of people that I would like to acknowledge for helping me to complete this project and earn my degree. First and foremost, I would like to thank my amazing advisors James Sherman and Jan Sheldon for their endless support, encouragement, thoughtfulness, patience, advice, and "coaching". Thank you for always pushing me to be the best researcher, teacher, clinician, and colleague that I can be. You have been the best advisors, mentors, teachers, and "surrogate Kansas family" I could have asked for. I would also like to thank the other members of my dissertation committee including Dr.

Telehealth to train interventionists teaching functional living skills to children with autism spectrum disorder

“…Additionally, no studies focused on the efficacy of telehealth to promote the acquisition of functional living skills by individuals with ASD. Since then, and to the best of the current authors' knowledge, just one study has demonstrated the effectiveness of telehealth to teach functional living skills to individuals with ASD (Boutain et al, 2020).…”

Telehealth parent coaching to improve daily living skills for children with ASD

“…The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the efficacy of a parent-implemented intervention with coaching delivered via telehealth in improving daily living skills. The study extends recent work in the area of telehealth adaptive skills interventions (Boutain et al, 2020;Pellegrino & DiGennaro Reed, 2020). For this study, four children with ASD and their parents participated.…”

“…However, for some participants, it may be necessary to use a parent-mediated approach, in which the professional delivers coaching to the parent over telehealth and the parent implements the intervention with the child. Boutain et al (2020) demonstrated that parents accurately implemented graduated guidance to teach self-care skills (e.g., hand and face washing) with their children following coaching they received via telehealth. The parent training procedure involved behavioral skills training (i.e., instructions, modeling, rehearsal, and feedback) and required four adults (i.e., two researchers to conduct modeling, the parent, an adult confederate for rehearsal sessions).…”

Video-modelling as an effective solution for coaching carers of autistic adults

“…Service providers are not always willing to or financially capable of implementing lengthy BSTs (e.g., Boutain et al, 2020;Clayton, 2019).…”

“…Barnard et al (2001) found that only 3% of 450 autistic adults lived completely independently; 10% could complete a range of unaided daily tasks, and about one-third lacked social interaction outside their family homes. Underdeveloped skills may exacerbate these poor levels of engagement, as well as their sense of helplessness, vulnerability, and serious short-term and permanent health problems (Boutain et al, 2020).…”