Research: The Role of Family-Centered Care in Research: Supporting the Social Communication of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Family-centered care programs may help guide research for children with autism. Parents and caregivers play an important role in therapy success for their children with autism. Family-centered care encourages caregivers to be part of all aspects of therapy. This article describes how this approach may be very helpful for research studies. During research studies, parents and caregivers may be involved in planning and collecting information. For example, researchers for a social stories study asked parents about their children's needs before designing the therapy research plan. They also asked parents to keep diaries during the research study to gather more information about how well the children did at home. The authors think that researchers got more information from their research when they include the caregivers.