Helpfulness of Parent to Parent Support Among Parents of Children with Autism

Schedule:
Thursday, January 15, 2015: 4:25 PM
Preservation Hall Studio 4, Second Floor (New Orleans Marriott)
* noted as presenting author
Nina N. Nelson, MSW, Student, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC
Background and Purpose: Parents of children with autism tend to experience higher levels of parenting stress and feel their children are harder to care for compared to parents of children with and without other special health care needs. To cope with caring for their children with autism parents frequently seek support from other parents of children with autism.  Yet little is known about the helpfulness of these peer supports to parents of children with autism with only a few studies on support groups and online forums.  No known study has examined  the helpfulness of one to one parent matches whereby parents receive support from a trained and experienced parent mentor of a child with similar needs although this approach is commonly used nationwide to support parents of children with autism. This study examined: a) the benefits that parents of children with autism derive from parent matches, and b) factors that promote and inhibit beneficial outcomes.

Method: This study used a longitudinal qualitative design guided by grounded theory methods. Participants were recruited from a parent matching program in a southern state and included 6 staff, and 19 mothers of children with autism (11 mentees and ten mentors involved in 13 matches). Mothers were diverse with respect to race, their children’s ages, autism severity and time since diagnosis.  In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted once with program staff. Mentees and mentors were interviewed before and repeatedly after their support relationship began for approximately six months. The interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed and analyzed in ATLAS.ti.7 using coding, constant comparisons, theoretical sampling to develop themes and their interrelationships.

Results: The analyses revealed emotional, social and practical benefits for mentees as well as barriers and facilitators to beneficial outcomes.  Emotional benefits included feeling understood, increased hope, security in knowing help is available, and decreased emotional distress and feelings of social isolation.  Social benefits included non-stigmatizing social interaction for self and children and linkages to other supportive networks.  Practical benefits included information on resources and insider tips on addressing children’s needs and navigating service systems. The most important facilitators of beneficial outcomes were similarities between parents especially in their children’s experiences, feeling connected to each other, friendly dispositions of parents, and open availability and genuineness of the parent mentor, and mentees’ readiness to engage in the helping process.  The most important barriers were dissimilarities in children’s experiences, difficulties maintaining contact, parent mentors' giving equal or greater focus to their own problems, conflicting expectations for the parent mentors' role, and an unpleasant disposition of either parent.

Conclusion and Implications: Parent matches can be an effective option for providing social support to parents of children with autism, enhancing their coping and quality of life.  To better facilitate beneficial outcomes social workers in these programs should emphasize matching for child similarity and parents’ time availability, outline clear expectations to  mentees of the scope of parent mentors’ roles, and create monitoring strategies  to ensure mentors are feeling supported and managing their personal problems.