Efficacy of family rehabilitation treatment performed by parents under the guidance of professionals in children with autism spectrum disorder: a prospective study.

Objectives: To study the efficacy of family rehabilitation treatment performed by parents under the guidance of professionals in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Methods: In the prospective study, 60 children with ASD, aged 24-60 months, were randomly divided into an observation group and a conventional group. The parents of the children in the conventional group received an online training on basic knowledge and rehabilitation training of ASD alone, and those in the observation group received the online training and performed family rehabilitation treatment under the guidance of a professional team. Psycho-Education Profile Third Edition (PEP-3) and Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) were used to evaluate the changes in related abilities after intervention.

Results: After 6 months of intervention, the scores of all dimensions of the PEP-3 scale in the observation group and most dimensions of the conventional group significantly increased (<0.01); the CARS scale scores of the two groups significantly decreased (<0.05). Compared with the conventional group, the observation group had significant increases in the scores of the dimensions of language understanding, language expression, gross motor, fine motor, self-care ability of daily living (<0.05), and adaptive behavior (<0.05), as well as a significant reduction in the CARS score (<0.05).

Conclusions: An online training on basic knowledge and rehabilitation training of ASD for parents can improve the abilities and core clinical symptoms of children with ASD. The family rehabilitation treatment model with a team of professionals as the resource platform and parents as the performer has a more significant efficacy on improving the language, sports, and other abilities and alleviating the severity of the symptoms in children with ASD.