Video interventions: Exploring experiences and impact for families

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) can experience difficulties with social interaction, emotional understanding and behaviour, which can have a negative impact upon family relationships.

Interventions that aim to improve social relationships, parental sensitivity and parent-child interactions can help to enhance wellbeing and outcomes for children with ASD and their families.

This thesis explores the effectiveness of video-based interventions in enhancing family relationships.

The review paper investigates whether video-based family interventions are effective in improving outcomes for parents, specifically in terms of parent-child interaction, emotional availability, sensitivity and mental health.

10 papers met the inclusion criteria for this review. Overall findings indicate that parenting interventions using video feedback can be effective, however future research using larger sample sizes and more robust methodology are required to increase internal and external validity.

The empirical paper examines the impact of video interaction guidance (VIG) on four families with a child with ASD.

Using a mixed methods design, the study explores changes in parent stress, child behaviour and parent-child interactions following a six week VIG intervention using the Reliable Change Index (RCI), whilst qualitatively exploring the parents' views of participation in VIG.

Qualitative results indicate that parents had experienced change throughout the course of the VIG intervention, including an increase in self-efficacy, modifications in their parenting behaviour and an increase in attunement within parent-child interactions.

However, this is not supported by the quantitative data analysis, which suggests that there had been few significant changes in parenting style, child behaviour and parent stress after participation in VIG, although some positive trends are identified in the results.

Finally, the dissemination and impact paper discusses practice-based research and evidence-based practice to explore the type of research impact this study aspires to make.