Fostering Belonging in Autistic Individuals.

Dyer et al. (2025) wrote a narrative review. They asked, 'What would happen if we treated belonging as a main goal in autism services?'

They looked at past work on inclusion, identity, and well-being. They did not run new experiments. Instead they built a case for making belonging a clear, trackable outcome.

The authors say belonging is more than being present. It is feeling valued and wanted.

They give steps to turn the fuzzy idea into an observable goal you can plot on a graph.

Davies et al. (2024) found that outside acceptance, not inside traits, drives a positive autistic identity. Kathleen’s call to measure belonging lines up with that data.

Mammarella et al. (2022) showed autistic adults face daily exclusion. The new paper answers that pain by urging teams to set explicit belonging targets.

Deserno et al. (2017) used network analysis on over 2,000 autistic people. Social satisfaction sat at the heart of well-being. Kathleen turns that stat into action: write belonging into the behavior plan.

Most plans track eye contact or quiet hands. Few track ‘feels welcome.’ Kathleen gives you a script to add a belonging goal in your next autism plan. Define it in observable terms, collect data, and share results with the client. You keep your ABA lens while honoring what autistic voices say matters most.