Supporting the participation of autistic children: development, acceptability and feasibility of an intervention to build capacity of early childhood educators

ABSTRACT

When early childhood educators include autistic children, they require information about these children’s needs and strategies to promote their participation in daycare activities. As there are many ways to build educators’ capacity, these key individuals for inclusion should be considered to offer interventions relevant to their context. This study aimed to develop an acceptable and feasible intervention to build educators’ capacity to facilitate the participation of autistic children with reactions to sensory stimulation in their daily routine. The person-based approach was used to guide the development and evaluation of the intervention. Based on three guiding principles (i.e. efficiency, flexibility, and clarity and usefulness), the intervention included two steps: 1) educational videos and 2) coaching meetings. Interviews with six educators revealed the intervention was generally appreciated and easy to implement in the daycares. Even though flexibility was perceived as meaningful, sufficient time should be recommended between each session to allow reflection and collaboration with colleagues should be supported. The possibility to validate educators’ observations or strategies identified came out as significant in addition to promoting their sense of efficacy. The combination of two types of capacity-building intervention contributed to the feasibility and acceptability of this intervention in early childhood daycares.

Acknowledgments

The research team wants to thank the six early childhood educators for their relevant feedback on the capacity-building intervention.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. While there is no clear consensus, the autistic community is most often favorable to identity-first language when referring to them (Botha, Hanlon, & Williams, 2023). The vocabulary used in this article has been selected following the recommendations of Bottema-Beutel, Kapp, Lester, Sasson, and Hand (2021) to avoid ableism and to respect autistic people’s preferences.

Additional information

Funding

The research for this paper was financially supported by the Fonds de recherche inclusion sociale (FRIS), the Centre interdisciplinaire de recherche en réadaptation et en intégration sociale (CIRRIS), the Institut universitaire en déficience intellectuelle et en trouble du spectre de l’autisme (IU-DITSA), the Social sciences and humanities research council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Santé (FRQS).