Supporting Children National Practice Guideline update
Autism CRC and the Guideline Development Group wish to thank everyone who has contributed to the initial round of community consultation. The development process is well underway with some stages now completed.
Autism CRC is developing the Supporting Children National Practice Guideline to support families to make informed choices when accessing services, and provide professionals with a set of recommendations to guide ethical and effective service delivery. The work is being completed by a 15-person Guideline Development Group that includes people with a diverse range of lived and professional expertise.
The project commenced in October 2021 and we anticipate releasing the completed Guideline in October 2022.
What has happened so far?
The Guideline Development Group has now completed two major pieces of work.
The first piece of work was a series of systematic research reviews examining:
- Recommendations from existing guidelines from around the world.
- Research findings about the experiences of children and families accessing therapies and support in Australia.
- Research evidence for the effects of a range of therapies and supports on a range of child and family outcomes.
The second piece of work was a community consultation process in which over 800 people participated. The consultation activities included:
- A comprehensive online community survey.
- A brief online survey.
- A parent observation and reflection activity.
- An expression through art activity.
- Focus groups involving autistic adults and parents.
- A Delphi survey of practitioners.
As part of the online survey, members of the autistic and autism communities were asked to share preferences in relation to how autism is talked about in the Guideline, including preferences for, and acceptability of, a range of common terms. Based on the feedback, the Guideline Development Group has endorsed the use of identity first language (e.g., autistic children) within the Guideline. This reflects the preference of the majority of the autistic community members who completed the survey and had strong ratings in relation to preference and acceptability among autistic people, parents, family member, and service providers. Accordingly, in presenting and discussing the Guideline, Autism CRC will adopt identify-first language.
What will happen next?
The Guideline Development Group is formulating a set of draft recommendations based on all the evidence. The draft Guideline will then be released publicly for 6-weeks between July 18 and August 29. All members of the autistic and autism communities will be welcome to provide feedback.
More about the Supporting Children National Guideline
The guideline will support families to make informed choices when accessing services, and provide professionals with a set of recommendations to guide ethical and effective service delivery. The recommendations will be based on the best available research and a comprehensive community consultation process.
The guideline is being developed according to the National Health and Medical Research Council’s recommended process.
The guideline will be informed by research evidence (building on the synthesis completed in 2020), reviews of previous autism guidelines, and the experiences of individuals on the autism spectrum and their families accessing therapy and support services, and comprehensive community consultation.