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Implementation of a Multi-Family Autism Transition Program in the High School Setting

Kuhn, J., Szidon, K., Kraemer, B., Steinbrenner, J. R., Tomaszewski, B., Hume, K., & DaWalt, L.
January
2022

From the abstract: "Transitioning Together is a multi-family intervention designed to support families of adolescents on the autism spectrum as they prepare for the transition to adulthood. Questions remain regarding its wide-scale adoption and implementation in real-world settings such as high schools. We examined student, teacher, and school-level facilitators and barriers to adopting and implementing Transitioning Together at 30 public high schools across three US states that were participating in the intervention arm of a larger randomized trial, which provided training and coaching for implementation of comprehensive evidence-based autism programming. Seventeen of the 30 schools adopted Transitioning Together. Community socioeconomic status and pre-existing quality of programming for family involvement and transition planning significantly predicted intervention adoption. Thirteen of the 17 schools that adopted Transitioning Together did so with a high level of fidelity (>90%). The areas of fidelity that schools struggled with most related to session structure, facilitating problem-solving and dialogue, and collecting feedback from families. Findings highlight struggles and successes with real-world adoption of the intervention in its current form. Future research is needed to further examine how to facilitate adoption across public high schools and/or other service systems, while maximizing effectiveness, as well as reach to historically underserved autism spectrum populations."

Citation

Kuhn, J., Szidon, K., Kraemer, B., Steinbrenner, J. R., Tomaszewski, B., Hume, K., & DaWalt, L. (2022). Implementation of a multi-family autism transition program in the high school setting. Autism. Advance online publication. DOI: 10.1177/13623613211065533

DOI

10.1177/13623613211065533