Abstract

Having a child with special needs may incur a tremendous toll on the family unit, a reality that is significantly more pronounced for members of marginalized (i.e., racial and ethnic minorities) communities. Examples of these disparities include more pronounced barriers to healthcare, delayed diagnoses, and difficulty accessing critical services. The present study had two aims. Firstly, to conduct a needs assessment exploring the types of services ethnically diverse parents rely on to support their children and families, as well as their satisfaction with the quality of these services. Secondly, to test the efficacy of a culturally adapted parent training program, ‘Parents Taking Action (PTA)’, with the goal of: a. Increasing parents’ knowledge of ASD b. Reducing parental stress c. Increasing parents’ perceived competence and self-efficacy beliefs. Five parents (n = 5) were recruited. The findings indicate that parents rely on several services offered by healthcare providers (e.g., pediatricians), education specialists, professionals (e.g., speech pathologists, occupational therapists, ABA therapists) to support their children from both the private and public sector to varying degrees of satisfaction. Several challenges to accessing services emerged: long waitlists, absence of information following a diagnosis, inaccessibility of private care (i.e., financial constraints) and language barriers, and issues within the public sector (e.g., lack of resources, poorly trained specialists, overcrowded services within the child’s school). Furthermore, all parents’ knowledge of ASD increased, half the parents saw a reduction of stress, and half of the parents’ self-efficacy beliefs improved. Taken together, the findings from the present study continue to support a burgeoning literature in support of culturally-adapted materials to support ethnically diverse parents of children with special needs.