Publication year
2017
Citation Title
Service delivery outcomes in ASD: Role of parent education, empowerment, and professional partnership.
Journal Name
Journal of Child & Family Studies
Journal Volume
26
Issue Number
9
Page Numbers
2386-2395
DOI
10.1007/s10826-017-0759-8
Summary
Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have significant and complex service needs that often go unmet. This study seeks to understand service disparities in this population by investigating the relationship between socioeconomic status (as measured by parent education), parent empowerment (sense of control gained by parent's ability to successfully utilize skills, knowledge, and resources) and quality of parent-professional (service provider) relationship. Findings show a positive relationship between education and number and satisfaction of services received.
Key Findings
Parents in the study indicated that they received less than 50% of the family and child services available to them.
Parents with higher education reported higher numbers of services, higher satisfaction with services, and higher service adequacy (ratio of total number of services received over number of services needed).
Parents with higher education reported having higher quality partnerships with their service providers, which explained their high ratings of service adequacy.
Parents with higher levels of empowerment had the lowest ratings on service adequacy even when compared to parents with low quality partnerships and low levels of empowerment.
Implications for Military Professionals
Attend trainings to improve understanding of the impact and stressors ASD places on a family
Collaborate with local community organizations to increase access to family and child services for military families with a child who has ASD
Implications for Program Leaders
Facilitate training sessions on improving parent-professional relationships in the ASD community for Service members with a child that has ASD
Develop support groups for Service members with a child that has ASD to encourage resource sharing among peers
Implications for Policy Makers
Promote the development of a resource sharing network for military families that have a child with ASD
Recommend the revision of health policies to include support for attaining access to ASD services for military families
Methods
Participants were recruited through online postings on various platforms including newsletters and listservs, flyers that were distributed to local schools and parent events, and partnerships with local advocacy agencies.
Data were collected through a digital survey using qualtrics. Parents were also given the option to request physical copies of the surveys.
Parents were asked to identify their highest level of attained education in the survey. Their responses were used as a measure of their socioeconomic status.
Participants
Participants were 249 parents with a child with ASD between 3 years to 20 years old.
Parents in this study were primarily mothers (76%) and White (83%). Most were either divorced (40%) or married (33%) and had either a four-year college degree (49%) or some college (31%).
Majority of the children in this sample had been diagnosed with ASD (68%) or autistic disorder (23%).
The severity of symptoms for majority of the children was rated as mild (45%) or moderate to severe (43.4%).
Limitations
Majority of the sample participants in the study were White and had high levels of educational attainment (some college). This limits the ability to generalize the findings to diverse populations.
Measures in this study utilized self-reports from participants, which limits the study as these self-reports measured participants' perception of the quality of services rather than the actual quality of service.
Participants' rating of the quality of partnership with service provider did not distinguish between the different types of service providers. Therefore, it is difficult to identify whether specific types of service providers promote higher or lower quality partnerships.
Avenues for Future Research
Expand the study to include ethnically diverse families with different levels of educational attainment
Refine the study to explore the relationship between specific types of services and parent-service provider relationship
Gather additional data on the relationship between empowerment and service adequacy
Focus
Civilian
Target Population
Population Focus
Abstract
Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) utilize a greater number of healthcare services compared to children with other developmental disabilities. Despite this, children with ASD remain at high risk for unmet service needs, which are compounded by differences in socioeconomic status (SES). Both empowerment and parent-professional partnership play a role in service outcomes and may be especially important in understanding these service disparities. Our goal was to better understand the contributions of these variables to service disparities in families of children with ASD. Two-hundred forty-nine parents of children with ASD between the ages of 3 and 20 participated in this online survey. Results support previous research highlighting high levels of unmet needs that are exacerbated by differences in parent education, a common indicator of SES. Empowerment and parent-professional partnership also predicted service delivery outcomes. While high quality partnership predicted greater service adequacy, empowerment was inversely related to services. Furthermore, an interaction found that highly empowered families experiencing poor quality partnerships reported worse service delivery outcomes, while empowerment was not a factor in services for families experiencing high quality partnerships. Parent-professional partnership partially mediated the relationship between parent education and service delivery outcomes. As such, increasing parent-professional partnerships through family-centered care and professional training may help to reduce education-related service disparities and improve satisfaction with care for families and children with ASD.
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