The COVID-19 pandemic has seen widespread adoption of telehealth as healthcare providers have attempted to maintain services while also adhering to social distancing guidelines.  One of the more interesting examples of this has been in children’s services, where even things such as breastfeeding consultancy have been provided virtually.

New research from Rutgers highlights how effective telehealth has been in training parents of children with autism about early interventions.

“Since parents play an important role in the treatment of their children’s autism symptoms, developing effective, efficient, socially acceptable and accessible training so they can implement these interventions is critically important,” the authors say. “However, many parents do not have access to this complex training due to geographic, economic and time barriers — or more recently the pandemic, which has made in-person training difficult.”

Early interventions

Autism spectrum disorder is believed to affect around one in 59 children in the US, and early behavioral interventions are strongly linked with the child being able to live independently, build friendships, and secure employment as adults.  This intervention is typically delivered by parents after they have received the appropriate training and support.  It’s designed to reduce problem behaviors, such as aggression, while increasing adaptive behaviors, such as social skills.  The interventions typically involve various play-based approaches.

The researchers partnered with 25 adults who had children diagnosed with autism and who had no previous experience with the interventions.  13 of the adults were assigned to the treatment group, with the remaining 12 assigned to the control group who did not receive any virtual training, but were still given access to the other behavioral programs they currently used.

Each parent was evaluated based upon how well they implemented the behavioral procedures learned during the period.  Their progress was gauged by first monitoring how the parents responded to the researchers before the virtual learning and then again afterward, with the interactions designed to elicit certain responses.

The results show that parents in the treatment group performed significantly better than those in the control group.  What’s more, the parents in the telehealth group rated the training they received as a 6.6 on a 7-point scale, which suggests it might have considerable promise for the future.

“The findings show that parents can be virtually trained in these complex procedures and that the methods are ones that they find easy to use,” the researchers conclude. “You want these treatments to not only work in the clinic with the trained technicians but also in a child’s daily life, helping parents to manage behavior and helping the child communicate better and to do activities like go out to dinner.”