The Child Development and Early Intervention Centers (CDIAP) have emerged as an important mediator for parents entering this new universe that is autism.
The arrival of a baby represents a unique experience for families, who, even before birth, imagine a perfect child who will have a healthy and satisfactory development. Unfortunately, this is not always the case: an average of 8.5% of the Spanish population has a disability, with 1.6% being children aged between 0 and 5 years (INE, 2008).
One of the disorders that currently attracts the most attention is Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): a neurodevelopmental problem that compromises communicative, social, and symbolic thinking skills. Its causes are still unknown, but it is known that, to a greater or lesser extent, it is influenced by the interaction between internal factors (genetics, hormones, etc.) and external factors (environmental factors and the relational experiences lived by the individual).
Are parents prepared for their children’s autism?
In these cases, the incongruence between expectation and reality and the total lack of parental preparation to face raising a special child can constitute a significant enhancer of childhood mental illness, since individuals’ first relationships with their immediate environment form the bases of their motor, cognitive, social, affective, and perceptual development.
Therefore, an ASD diagnosis increases the probability that families experience the situation as a trauma, and traumas often lead to a grief process. This, in turn, generates a series of emotional changes that can alter the first parent-child relationships and, consequently, alter the already endangered prognosis of child development.
Functions of a Child Development and Early Intervention Center
In this context, Child Development and Early Intervention Centers (CDIAP) have emerged as an important mediator for parents entering this new universe of disability. Their purpose is to help families in their empowerment process and provide them with resources so that they can act as enhancers of the child’s development with ASD, providing an appropriate environment for their physical, psychological, and social needs.
However, what is observed in practice is, on the one hand, overwhelmed CDIAPs, forced to reduce the number of intervention hours with each family due to the high demand for patients seeking help. On the other hand, families are observed to be forced to extend therapeutic intervention guidelines to other environments, such as the home environment, even though they are in a moment of total disorientation.
Thus, without a specialized support service, psychological care for families is compromised, as is the development of the child with ASD. But the CDIAPs themselves should be responsible for providing parents with all the necessary resources and means to avoid these problems (GAT, 2000), including home care support (CERMI, 2005).
The evolutionary development of the autistic child in early ages
Therefore, this article advocates for the increase of the Home-based Early Support and Assistance Staff (PASTD) service as a tool for therapeutic continuity in the family home and as support for parents of children with ASD who are undergoing intervention in CDIAPs. In this way, the aim is to favor the evolutionary development of the child diagnosed with ASD at early ages, so that the family can act as the main agents of the intervention.
For this, it is necessary to:
- Provide practical help to parents, giving them tools so they can achieve the objectives and goals agreed upon with the reference professional at the CDIAP and serving as a model for them.
- Train parents to learn how to manage the difficulties that arise in the daily life of a child with ASD, optimizing and reinforcing family competencies and increasing parental confidence.
- Ensure that the treatment the child receives and the stimulation of the environment are ideal for their development, creating environments that promote good habits.
- Make the most of the child’s interests to foster their motivation.
- Increase the teaching process within the child’s and family’s routine, promoting the development of communicative, social, symbolic play, and personal autonomy skills.
- Facilitate the construction of a context where teaching, activities, and the physical environment are as structured as possible, also acting on the ergonomics and design of the environment in which the child is located, enhancing the environmental factor to provide the child with better development.
- Encourage and empower parents to communicate through different communication channels.
- Promote the maximum exchange of positive family experiences through play situations and daily life activities.
The Home-based Early Support and Assistance Staff
Considering this, the offer of the PASTD (Home-based Early Support and Assistance Staff) service would entail a series of benefits for participants, families, the health system, and society. Firstly, it is a way to include families in the intervention process, as this represents the child’s most influential context and the main constant in their life (Leonhardt, 2008). Their participation in treatments generates greater knowledge about ASD, and this learning, in turn, generates a series of positive effects that lead to a new environment more suited to the child’s needs.
Secondly, it can be considered a strategy for centers to respond to the high demand for care from an ever-increasing public, as it is carried out in a home environment. The world is constantly evolving, and it is necessary to research and create new services, resources, and strategies for social support for families.
Thirdly, there is the international finding that the earlier the early intervention process in ASD begins, the better the child’s prognosis, as it favors redirecting the course of abnormal development towards a trajectory of as normalized an evolution as possible (GAT, 2000). This, in turn, influences not only the improvement of the child’s quality of life and their families but also what constitutes the fourth and final point of relevance of this article, which is the reduction of financial and social costs that families often face throughout their lives due to the pathology of their dependents (Jacobson and Mulick, 2000; Jarbrink and Knapp, 2001).