Improving parents' ability to advocate for services for youth with autism: A randomized clinical trial.
A 12-week group advocacy course gives parents of transition-age autistic teens clear, usable knowledge and confidence to secure adult services.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Taylor et al. (2023) ran a randomized trial with families of autistic teens nearing adulthood.
Half the parents joined ASSIST, a 12-week group that teaches how to fight for adult services.
The other half got only mailed fact sheets. Then the team compared parent knowledge and confidence.
What they found
Parents who took ASSIST scored much higher on tests of adult-service knowledge.
They also felt more able to speak up for their kids.
The mailed-info group showed almost no change on either measure.
How this fits with other research
Nadig et al. (2018) gave autistic adults themselves a 10-week group program and saw gains in self-determination. ASSIST extends that idea by training parents instead, so the whole family is ready for transition.
Burke et al. (2022) taught parents legislative advocacy for special-education law and saw similar knowledge bumps. ASSIST replicates that parent-training success but targets adult-transition services rather than school policy.
Ni et al. (2025) and Chan et al. (2025) both ran short group programs for autism parents. Their focus was stress and stigma, yet they still found medium parent-level gains. ASSIST shows the same group format works when the topic is advocacy instead of mental health.
Why it matters
If you serve transition-age youth, you can add a 12-week parent advocacy module to your menu. Parents leave knowing how to secure housing, vocational, and healthcare services. That means fewer crisis calls later and smoother hand-offs from school to adult systems.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Youth with autism face challenges accessing services as they transition to adulthood. Improving parents' ability to advocate for services on behalf of their youth may be an effective way to improve service access and ultimately transition outcomes in this group. In this study, we tested whether participating in an advocacy intervention improved parents' ability to advocate for services for their transition-aged youth with autism. One hundred and eighty-five parents of youth with autism ages 16-26, recruited across three states in the U.S., were randomized to one of two experimental conditions. The treatment condition received the ASSIST program, a 12-week (24-h) group-based intervention. The control condition received the same written materials as the treatment condition. Primary outcomes for this report-parent advocacy ability-were collected at baseline (prior to randomization) and post-test (immediately after the treatment group finished the 12-week program) by survey. After taking ASSIST, the treatment condition had greater gains than controls in knowledge of adult services (B = -1.62, CI = -2.33 to -0.90) and perceived advocacy skills (B = -0.19, CI = -0.33 to -0.04). Participants who had less knowledge, lower perceived advocacy skills, and less active coping styles at baseline had the greatest treatment gains. Findings suggest that ASSIST is effective in improving parent advocacy ability and may be most beneficial for parents who experience greater challenges advocating for their son/daughter with autism. Future research will examine whether gains in parent advocacy ability leads to improvements in service access and post-school outcomes for transition-age youth with autism.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2023 · doi:10.1176/appi.ps.202000144