COMPASS Across Settings (CAST) for Integrating School, Home, and Community Services and Improving Transition Outcomes for Students With ASD
Ball State University
Summary
Purpose: The purpose of this project is to develop and test the COMPASS \[Collaborative Model for Competence and Success\] Across Settings (CAST) intervention to enhance the goal setting and attainment skills of autistic youth. Despite federal education law mandating transition services as part of the Individualized Education Program (IEP) for ensuring good outcomes for students with disabilities, current educational practices have been unable to demonstrate that autistic students experience positive postsecondary outcomes. There are existing, evidence-based interventions aimed at supporting positive outcomes for these students. However, these interventions have not systematically provided coaching support to the caregivers, students, and employment specialists. To address these issues, CAST will integrate three evidence-based interventions for supporting student transitions while providing this critical coaching support. By doing so, CAST aims to align the priorities and goals of interventions across home, school, and community settings to better support positive postsecondary outcomes for autistic students.
Description
Project Activities: The research team will use an iterative approach for integrating the three interventions into CAST, obtaining feedback from focus groups and stakeholder members along the way, and running a field trial after development. The research team will then conduct a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of CAST to examine postsecondary outcomes at both 3 months and 1 year after high school. Social network analysis will be used to understand the integration of services and a cost analysis will be conducted. Products: This project will result in a fully developed intervention, CAST, for…
Eligibility
- Age range
- 16–99 years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Yes
Inclusion Criteria: * Students with verified autism and IEPs that designate services for autism * Caregivers of students with autism * Special education teachers of students with autism * Pre-employment specialists of students with autism Exclusion Criteria: * Not planning to move or leave their job over the school year
Interventions
- BehavioralCOMPASS Across Settings (CAST)
CAST will begin with an initial joint session with the student, caregiver, special education teacher, and pre-employment transition specialist that allows for discussion on the student's postsecondary goals, preferences, frustrations, challenges, and strengths related to social skills, adaptive/self-management, communication, problem behaviors, learning skills, and sensory sensitivities and preferences. This discussion will pinpoint critical social, communication, and work behavior/learning goals related to postsecondary goals and inform the intervention plans that are generated for each goal. Following this initial consultation, there will be four additional 1-hour sessions that incorporate evidence-based coaching, provided by the investigators, including performance feedback monitoring and instructional support. Each session is standardized and allows for assessment of student progress and intervention modification/self-reflection on the implementation of the intervention plans.
Location
- Ball State UniversityMuncie, Indiana