The Secret Agent Society Program: A Self-Directed Format with Parent Support

Abstract The broad aim of this study was to investigate a self-directed social and emotional skills intervention – The Secret Agent Society (SAS) for children with a high functioning autism spectrum disorder (HF-ASD). Parents received training via DVD to be principal facilitators of the SAS program and were provided with structured parent/facilitator and child workbooks. In addition, parents were provided with weekly therapist support via Skype. It was hypothesised that children would report improvements in social skills and emotion management strategies on teacher, parent and child report measures. It was also hypothesised that parents would report reduced behavioural problems, and greater self-efficacy. An exploratory component investigated outcomes of parent emotional distress and child anxiety. This study was a pre-post design with an 8-week baseline. Participants consisted of 38 parents, 41 children and 35 teacher participants recruited from regional/rural Queensland and metropolitan Brisbane. Parent and child participants were administered measures of social skills, emotional management, child behavioural problems, parent self-efficacy, child anxiety and parent emotional distress at pre-intervention, post-intervention and 6-week follow-up. Analyses of outcomes were conducted with a series of repeated measures MANOVAs and one-way ANOVAs at post-intervention and 6-week follow-up. Significant improvements in child social skills with gains maintained at 6-week follow-up were reported with large effect sizes evident. Parent self-efficacy, child behaviour and child anxiety levels significantly improved, however, no significant improvement in parental distress was reported. In addition, outcomes from the SAS self-directed program were compared with the original clinic-based program conducted by Beaumont and Sofronoff (2008). Results indicated greater changes in social skills outcomes in the clinic-based program and no difference between groups on emotional management strategies. The limitations of the study and implications of results are discussed