Supporting Social Inclusion for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders Insights from Research and Practice

148 Iva Strnadová

CASE STUDY 1

Rosie is a 13-year-old Caucasian girl with high-functioning Autism. She lives

with her parents and two younger brothers in a metropolitan city. She enjoys

playing the piano and reading science books. She is fascinated with microbi-

ology and would like to become a clinical laboratory scientist when she grows

up. She feels lonely, having only one friend, who is imaginary.

Rosie’s parents are concerned about her social isolation. Any time they

came to collect Rosie after school, she was on her own, not engaging with her

In supporting their child’s social inclusion, families sometimes need the support
and guidance of professionals, especially when it comes to supporting their child in
areas such as behaviour management and social skills development (Derguy, Michel,
M’Bailara, Roux and Bouvard, 2015; Papageorgiou and Kalyva, 2010). In their
review of parent education programs available for parents for children with ASD,
Schultz, Schmidt and Stichter (2011) identified that most of these programs focus
on behavioural and communication techniques, with most of these targeting parents
of children aged up to 5 years of age. Some of these programs were designed for
both children with high-functioning ASD and their parents (Weiss, Viecili, Sloman
and Lunsky, 2013). There is clearly a need for such programs to also target parents of
teenagers and young adults with ASD.

Peer acceptance and role of home–school collaboration

Peer perception and acceptance of children with ASD are of critical importance
within the concept of social inclusion (Bossaert et al., 2013). While it could be
argued that families of children with ASD have limited opportunities to influence
how classmates perceive their child, it does not mean that families have no influ-
ence in this matter. For instance, when reviewing the results of a study exploring
strategies used by 13 Canadian teachers for including children with ASD, one of
the recommendations for successful inclusion was to build a rapport with parents,
including the development of an open communication system (Lindsay, Proulx,
Scott and Thomson, 2014). In other words, home–school collaboration is important
for peer-acceptance of a child with ASD, and parents can be of great support to
school efforts. Teachers and parents can discuss strategies for raising disability aware-
ness in schools, such as inviting self-advocates to speak about their experiences.
In cases when students with ASD decide to disclose their disability in a class and
talk about their experiences, parents can support their children in preparing such
a disclosure and the potential discussions/questions that would arise from other
students. Role-play can be successfully used in such circumstances.