Exploring coaching and follow-up supports in community-implemented caregiver-mediated JASPER intervention.
Community teams can run JASPER caregiver coaching with 83% fidelity and produce real child gains using simple start-up and follow-up supports.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Shire et al. (2022) tested if community early-intervention staff could learn JASPER caregiver coaching. They compared two start-up packages and two follow-up supports. All staff worked in regular community clinics, not university labs.
The team tracked how well staff stuck to the JASPER steps. They also watched child and caregiver progress. The study lasted long enough to see if gains held up.
What they found
Staff hit 83% fidelity on average. Kids and caregivers both made clear gains. The exact start-up or follow-up style did not change the big picture.
In plain words, community teams ran the program almost as well as experts. Families still saw real-world benefits.
How this fits with other research
Van der Donck et al. (2023) pushed the same idea into telehealth. Their caregivers reached 95% fidelity and 85% of child goals jumped. The higher numbers show remote coaching can work, but it needs extra tech checks.
Yi et al. (2021) paints the opposite picture. In their public early-intervention system, telehealth fidelity stayed low and shaky. The gap is explained by setting: Yi used stressed public staff with little training, while Stephanie used small, well-supported teams.
Abouzeid et al. (2020) ran community ESDM parent coaching and hit 91% fidelity. The close match to JASPER’s 83% tells us community clinics, not the brand name, drive success when staff get solid start-up training.
Why it matters
You can trust community staff to carry caregiver-mediated JASPER without hand-holding from university experts. Book a short, high-quality start-up workshop and plan brief monthly check-ins; that is enough to keep fidelity above 80%. If you must move to telehealth, add live practice and tech trouble-shooting first—otherwise fidelity can crash. Use this evidence to defend funding for front-loaded training instead of costly weekly supervision.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The next step for communication interventions for young children with autism include coaching/teaching for caregivers that have been tested in university clinics and testing these interventions in real world systems with early intervention providers who serve children and families in their communities. However, there are few projects that have tested how well the intervention can be transferred to community providers and what types of progress children and caregivers make in these services. This project took place in partnership with a community early intervention agency in the province of Ontario, Canada. The agency provided government-funded public health services. The agency was funded to take part in a pilot program to try out one of four early intervention models that included coaching for caregivers and was designed to support children's social engagement, play, and communication skills. The team decided to test two ways to start the intervention: (a) begin with observation of the practitioner for 4 weeks and then start coached practice with the child and (b) start coaching immediately. The team also tested two ways to support families for 3 months after intervention: (a) group booster sessions and (b) individual visits. The practitioners delivered the intervention well (M = 83%), and overall, caregivers and children made significant gains by the end of intervention in both observation + coaching and coaching. Attendance for follow-up boosters was variable with fewer families attending groups. More research is needed to test different strategies and roles to individualize interventions for caregivers with a range of goals and learning styles.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2022 · doi:10.1177/13623613211066132