Pilot study of a parent training program for young children with autism: the PLAY Project Home Consultation program.
Parent-implemented DIR/Floortime at home helps nearly half of autistic toddlers make solid developmental gains on a shoestring budget.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Richard and team tested the PLAY Project Home Consultation program. the families with autistic toddlers got 3-hour monthly home visits for one year.
Parents learned DIR/Floortime techniques during play on the living-room floor. Researchers tracked kids' developmental progress with the FEAS scale before and after.
What they found
Nearly half the kids made good to very good developmental gains. Parents loved the program and said it cost far less than clinic therapy.
The average child moved up one full level on the FEAS scale. No family dropped out, showing strong buy-in for home-based coaching.
How this fits with other research
Simacek et al. (2020) later scooped this pilot into their 2020 review of telehealth parent programs. They show the field has moved from in-home visits to Zoom coaching.
Klein et al. (2024) took the same parent-coaching idea but started even younger. Their online LiL' STEPS worked over the study period-old babies, proving you can teach parents developmental play skills through a screen.
Gerow et al. (2021) kept the telehealth angle but switched the target. Instead of broad development, they coached parents to teach tooth-brushing and dressing skills to 5-young learners. All four kids mastered the daily living skills with no in-person visits.
Bernard-Opitz et al. (2004) ran a head-to-head test before PLAY existed. They found behavioral methods beat natural play on compliance and attention. PLAY's success shows parent-delivered natural play can still work when you coach families well.
Why it matters
You can train parents to deliver DIR/Floortime at home for a fraction of clinic costs. Start with monthly 3-hour visits, teach playful back-and-forth exchanges, and track progress with the FEAS. The model scales to telehealth as kids and families get older.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The PLAY Project Home Consultation (PPHC) program trains parents of children with autistic spectrum disorders using the DIR/Floortime model of Stanley Greenspan MD. Sixty-eight children completed the 8-12 month program. Parents were encouraged to deliver 15 hours per week of 1:1 interaction. Pre/post ratings of videotapes by blind raters using the Functional Emotional Assessment Scale (FEAS) showed significant increases (p <or= 0.0001) in child subscale scores. Translated clinically, 45.5 percent of children made good to very good functional developmental progress. There were no significant differences between parents in the FEAS subscale scores at either pre-or post-intervention and all parents scored at levels suggesting they would be effective in working with their children. Overall satisfaction with PPHC was 90 percent. Average cost of intervention was $2500/ year. Despite important limitations, this pilot study of The PLAY Project Home Consulting model suggests that the model has potential to be a cost-effective intervention for young children with autism.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2007 · doi:10.1177/1362361307076842