Grupo de orientação a pais de crianças com autismo: contribuições da psicologia para o contexto escolar

Abstract

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is considered as one of the conditions that most compromises the neurodevelopment of children. These subjects have a fundamental characteristic deficit in their social-communicative and behavioral skills, besides problems of socialization and communication forming a dyad leading to a series of daily impairment in their lives. When the guardians of the child do not know intervention strategies to mitigate/prevent the behavioral problems, the daily handling might overburden them. Current researches on intervention with children have highlighted the importance of the family, changing the focus from the subject to the environment, including active participation of parents and schools. The behavioral problems showed at home tend to be repeated at school, where they can become barriers to participation and learning, hindering the access of the student to the school curricula. Therefore, the mitigation of such problems could, besides the decreasing of the impact on the parents, help the school on the process of educational inclusion of these students. The aim of this study was to track the effects of a group intervention with the parents of autist children on their behavioral problems and the docent perception within the school context. The group intervention was composed by eight members and each weekly meeting lasted two hours. The meetings were led by the coordinator and a co-coordinator of the project. The sample was composed by seven participants. First the parents filled a form on demographic data and a questionnaire on behavioral problems (parents’ version), followed by a child and adolescent (aging from 6 to 18 years old) behavior inventory (CBCL/6-18). The teachers were reached before the beginning of the intervention and also filled a questionnaire on behavior problems (Teachers’ version). At the end of the intervention, the questionnaires were applied once more together with a satisfaction questionnaire to evaluate the level of achievement of the Guardians with the program. The themes approached in the meetings derived from the demand identified along with the parents on the first meeting of the group. They were worked as of behavior management strategies that can be used daily. The meetings organized in a way to allow all the participants to interact, exchange experience and practice the interventions, based on the practical principles of Cognitive Behavioral Psychotherapy. The results showed a decrease of behavior problems after the intervention, according to the view of parents and teachers. In what concerns to the point of view of parents, the improvement was more significant, highlighting the importance of the work along with the parents and the educators to enhance the benefits. The parents also stated to be very pleased with the orientation group, emphasizing the enforceability of the social intervention.