Westmead Feelings Program pilot study for adolescents with autism and mild intellectual disability

Not Applicable

Completed

• Conditions: Autism Spectrum Disorder; Intellectual disability; Mental Health - Autistic spectrum disorders; Mental Health - Learning disabilities

• Registration Number: ACTRN12618000081213
• Lead Sponsor: The Children's Hospital at Westmead

Brief Summary

Not available

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Results First Posted: 1900-01-01
• Study Start: 2018-01-19
• Study Completion: 2020-10-30
• Last Update Posted: 15 November 2021

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: Completed
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 38

Inclusion Criteria

Adolescent participants: Adolescents eligible to participate in the Clinic pilot of the adapted WFP study will be 12-16 years old with a diagnosis of ASD and IQ between 50 and 75. Confirmation of diagnosis will be through assessments conducted by staff at Children's Hospital Westmead, Department of Psychological Medicine using the ADOS2, SRS, ABAS3 and WISC5. As indicated on the parent background information questionnaire, adolescent participants must have a minimum of a phrase level of expressive verbal communication skills and a minimum ability to follow short simple sentences and instructions.
All participants must speak English and be willing to attend the clinic sessions.
The Support Unit selected for inclusion in the adapted WFP school based pilot will be selected through communications with the NSW Department of Education, Learning and Wellbeing Officer, who will recommend one appropriate high school with a suitable support unit class. The selected class will be in a mainstream (regular) school and may also include students that do not have ASD and/or Mild ID. For the purpose of this study the recommendations of the Learning and Wellbeing Officer will be of a Support Unit that is comprised of at least 4 adolescent students (aged 12-16) that have ASD and Mild Intellectual Disability all of whom have parental consent to participate in the study.
Adolescent participants: Adolescents eligible to participate in the school based pilot will be aged 12-16 years old and attend the Support Unit class. Once consent is given, the school counsellor will review student files to confirm a previous diagnosis of ASD and IQ between 50 and 75. Confirmation of severity will be through ABAS-3 and SRS assessment completed by parents. Parents and teachers will provide feedback on the adolescent participant’s expressive and receptive communication skills as well as outcome measures.
The school based pilot is a whole classroom intervention with students allocated to classes based on a range of disability criteria. It may be that students with an IQ below 50 and above 75 or students without an ASD diagnosis are members of the class invited to participate. These students will be also invited to participate in the research project and class sessions. Given adolescent participants will be recruited from one class taught by one class teacher, it may be that the burden of the teacher completing questionnaires on all participating students is too great to allow for participation and quality data collection. The Principal Information Sheet states that educators who are familiar with participating adolescents to the extent that they are able to reliably report on their emotion and social skills can complete questionnaires for this study. This may be a class teacher, teacher’s aide, Assistant Principal, or Well-being Coordinator.
Note: All parents of students in the support unit class will be invited to consent for the research study, involving the collection of data relating to the adapted WFP. If parents of the school pilot do not consent for their child to participate in this research study, their child will still receive the adapted WFP. Data will not be collected on non-consenting participants.

Exclusion Criteria

In the clinical pilot adolescent participants who are reported to have high levels of reported challenging behaviour, high levels of attention difficulties, are non-verbal (or very little verbal communication) and have been previously reported to have moderate to severe mental health issues will be exclude from the trial. WFP is delivered in a group format in a clinic setting which requires participants to be comfortable in settings where there is a level of verbal communication required. As the WFP is a mental health prevention program, if current mental health difficulties are too great it may limit the ability of the participant to participate in the program or benefit from the skill building elements of the program when delivered in a group format in a clinic setting.

Study & Design

• Study Type: Interventional
• Study Design: Not specified