Advocating for Supports to Improve Service Transitions

The proposed research plan is designed to develop and test the effectiveness of a national curriculum of the ASSIST (Advocating for SupportS to Improve Service Transition) program, a 12-week parent training program targeting parents' ability to advocate for services to improve the transition to adulthood for youth with autism (note that an optional 13th session on secondary transition planning can be offered if ASSIST is being delivered to families of youth who are in high school). Preliminary work demonstrated that youth whose parents participated in the "Volunteer Advocacy Program- Transition" or VAP-T (a pilot 12-week intervention program on which ASSIST is based) were more likely to be employed or in postsecondary education (PSE), and received more school-based and adult services, when compared to a wait-list control group. In the proposed research, the investigators conduct a randomized-controlled trial with 180 families to build on previous findings in four important ways: 1) by making modifications to the program content to make it applicable to service systems across the nation, and rigorously testing whether the ASSIST program is effective when delivered across three states (Tennessee, Illinois, Wisconsin); 2) by incorporating the perspective of offspring with autism into the intervention and data collection; 3) by examining mechanisms by which the ASSIST program influences youth outcomes; and 4) by exploring barriers to participation and factors that moderate treatment response. The investigators hypothesize that ASSIST participation will improve parents' advocacy ability, leading to higher rates of employment, PSE, social participation, and service access for youth with autism. The investigators will test this hypothesis by randomly assigning parents of transition-aged youth with autism (ages 16-26) to either a treatment or active, materials-only control group, and following families over 3 years. The investigators propose four Specific Aims: (1) To use a multi-site randomized-controlled trial to examine whether ASSIST participation increases parent advocacy ability (i.e. the intervention target); (2) To test whether participating in ASSIST leads to improved youth outcomes (employment, post-secondary education, social participation, service access) during the transition to adulthood; (3) To examine which aspects of parent advocacy ability mediate the relations between ASSIST participation and youth outcomes; and (4) To explore moderators of treatment response and barriers to participation in the intervention. By rigorously testing a new intervention to improve the transition to adulthood for youth with autism, the proposed research addresses an area of critical need as identified by the 2016-7 Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee Strategic Plan. The project will result in a new intervention to improve outcomes for youth with autism that can be disseminated through state and local agencies across the nation.