Overcoming language barriers in interventions for immigrant parents of autistic children

Parent training is key to the success of treatment for autistic children and has been demonstrated to not only improve child outcomes but also decrease parental stress. However, language barriers have been identified as a key barrier to immigrant parents’ access to services and contribute to disparate outcomes for autistic children. While matching parents with service providers who speak the same language is ideal, the shortage in bilingual service providers may mean that immigrant parents experience long wait times for linguistically appropriate services. Preliminary evidence suggests that the use of video instruction, with some support from a provider who speaks the same language as the parent, can be used to overcome language barriers in parent training. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the use of video instruction within an asynchronous, telehealth parent training intervention for increasing autistic children’s daily living skills. An English speaking experimenter delivered the intervention to four Spanish speaking parents with autistic children. The intervention included video instructions and feedback, as well as messages translated using online translation software. Taking into account Hispanic cultural values for personalismo, families also received a weekly, 5-minute phone call from a Spanish-English bilingual experimenter. Experiment 1 used a multiple probe design across two daily living skills and Experiment 2 used a multiple probe design across three families to evaluate the effects of the intervention. Results indicated that fidelity of implementation increased for all four parents and some improvement in children’s daily living skills was observed. The inclusion of qualitative inquiry in the evaluation of social validity revealed certain procedures in Experiment 1 to be socially invalid, leading to modifications which increased the social validity of procedures in Experiment 2. Analysis of qualitative data from Experiment 2 revealed some dissatisfaction with child outcomes. Potential implications for practice and the value of including qualitative methodology in the evaluation of social validity in future research is discussed.Special Educatio