Early start intervention for young children with autism attending educational services in low-income areas Erasmus Project

Project Title

Early start intervention for young children with autism attending educational
services in low-income areas

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Inclusion – equity; Access for disadvantaged; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education

Project Summary

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is an umbrella term used to group a range of brain development disorders. According to the DSM-5 (APA, 2013) a dyad of impairments must be present for an ASD diagnosis: (1) persistent social communication and interaction deficits in multiple contexts, and (2) restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour, interests, or activities. It is accepted that at least 1% of the population have ASD (Atlanta Centre for Disease Control). No medical treatment is available for the core symptoms of Autism, but children with autism progress much better when specific educational supports are provided.

After diagnosis, early intervention for autism is essential for the child’s development and education and his/her future inclusion. Several early intervention programs have been developed in recent decades with some of them having strong scientific evidence of their effectiveness (Wong et al, 2014). A subgroup of those methods focuses on parent training as a means of obtaining the best results in child development. Parent training research on early intervention with autism has proven effective because parents can learn to implement strategies with a high degree of fidelity, helping their children to generalize and maintain skills. Research suggests that parent training is a cost-effective and efficient method of providing early intervention for young children with ASD (Ingersoll and Dvortcsak, 2010) and it is appropriate for low-income regions (WHO). Families should be provided with the opportunity to learn those strategies, and these opportunities should include not only didactic sessions but also ongoing consultation looking at individualized problem-solving, including in-home observations or training for a family, as needed, to support improvements both at home and at school (NRC, 2001).

The STAY-IN project brought cost-effective and evidence-based early educational intervention programs for ASD to low-income regions of the EU through schools working with young children with autism. To achieve this, participant organisations shared their best practices in this field and participated in three intensive training actions around three specific parent-mediated intervention programmes for ASD: PACT (University of Manchester), ImPACT (University of Michigan) and ESDM (MIND Institute in California). 17 participants attended all the training actions with all of them acquiring basic accreditation of the three programmes and 8 of them acquiring advanced (full) accreditation on one of the three programmes. All partners interchange good practices among them and worked together in analysing the applicability of those models in their region, producing a final public report that is available at the Erasmus+ Result platform and on the project website: https://bit.ly/3boKvgl

A very high impact was obtained in all participant partners. They reformulated their early intervention services including the good practices and techniques learnt in the STAY-IN project, obtaining full participation of most families in early intervention programmes for young children with autism, and they extended the new knowledge they acquired to their broader community, thus having multiple positive effects on children and families participating in early intervention programmes in the involved EU regions.

Project Website

https://stay-in.adaptalab.org

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 132551 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITAT DE VALENCIA & Country: ES

Project Partners

• SCOALA GiMNAZIALA SPECTRUM
• FUNDACION MIRA’M DE LA COMUNITAT VALENCIANA
• Bulgarian Association for Persons with Intellectual Disabilities (BAPID)
• UNIVERSIDAD DE SALAMANCA
• ASOCIACIÓN DE PADRES Y FAMILIARES DE PERSONAS CON TRASTORNOS DEL ESPECTRO DEL AUTISMO DE AVILA Y SU PROVINCIA
• FUNDATIA MARCEL PRODAN
• CONSELLERÍA DE EDUCACIÓN, CULTURA Y DEPORTE