Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is an umbrella term used to group together 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 for his/her future inclusion. A number of 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 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 aims to bring cost-effective and evidence-based early educational intervention programs for ASD to low-income regions of the EU by means of schools working with young children with autism. In order to achieve this, participant organisations will share their best practices in this field. Preliminary work has been undertaken; over the past year, the MP FOUNDATION has taken important steps to make Romania the first EU country to implement the PST (Parent-Skill Training), a program developed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and international charity Autism Speaks that has been specifically developed for low-income regions. BAPID has pioneered the development of early intervention services for autism in Bulgaria, with the opening of a specific early intervention centre in Vidin in 2011. AUTISMOAVILA specialises in ESDM (Early Start Denver Model). AUTISMOAVILA, in collaboration with the MIND Institute (USA), provides training on this version (which is appropriate for city services but not for rural areas such as those in Avila that are 2 hours from the provincial capital). USAL has translated and developed training actions around IMPACT Model (Michigan State University and Portland, Oregon), which is a very well-structured program for early intervention in autism based on close collaboration with parents to reach its objectives. All the partners of the proposal will collaborate in three work groups to produce reports about the feasibility of implementation of ESDM-P, IMPACT and PST in the participating regions, with an in depth analysis of technical, economic, cultural and societal issues. A further work group will compare the proposed models in order to reach higher level conclusions for inclusion in a global report. This report will serve to inform policy makers about the best alternatives available. A high impact is expected for young students with autism, their parents and teachers from the participating schools/associations, who will be able to access early intervention evidence-based programs for ASD. The training department of the Regional Government of Valencia (CEFIRES-GVA) will increase its training repertoire by including early intervention programs for school provisions for young children with autism. The participating Universities (UVEG and USAL) will promote research in this area and will obtain first-hand experience of the needs of people with autism and how early intervention can foster their development. The sustainability of project outcomes is ensured by the support of research institutions authoring the early intervention models. These models have been developed with decades of research efforts and are under continuous review and improvement.
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.