The ESIPP strategic partnership a collaborative, action-based and stakeholder-empowering methodology, using mixed methods of data collection and analysis.

The project has been designed to use methods which will realise practical, real world outcomes.

PROJECT ACTIVITIES

a) Development of Parent Curriculum and Training Materials
During the first 6 months of the project, significant activity will be undertaken developing the overall curriculum and training materials.

All project members will contribute to the overall outline.

Members of this workstream will identify core curriculum content, addressing both transnational and local issues. Identification will be supported by surveying parents in Croatia, Cyprus and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, as well as by reviewing the literature.

Having identified the overall curriculum, training materials will be differentiated and translated for each setting.

These materials will be tested and refined through the over the lifetime of the project.

The focus will be on identifying:

  • what needs to be taught
  • the best methods of teaching (setting, time, length/number of sessions)
  • differentiation issues (culture, services available, expectations)
  • how to maximise outcomes for participants.

b) Parent Education Courses
A minimum of 18 courses will be run through the lifetime of the project – 6 courses each in Croatia, Cyprus and the Republic of Macedonia.

c) Parent Education Model and Policy Recommendations
The findings from the parent training programmes will inform the development of the overall parent education model regarding autism, which will be refined throughout the course of the project.

This document is designed for policy- and decision-makers and makes recommendations for policy and practice across Europe. It will be produced as a document with an accompanying YouTube video (the latter developed by Partner 1, which has expertise in this area).

d) Multiplier Events
Four multiplier events – one-day Stakeholder Conferences – will be organised in Croatia, Cyprus, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and the UK.

The events will provide opportunities:

  • for parents, professionals, policy-makers and other stakeholders to feed into the development of the model and curriculum
  • to present the developing model, curriculum and materials
  • to enable partners in the project to share their knowledge and expertise with regard to autism through a blend of lectures, workshops and discussions.

The ESIPP partners will also participate in the Autism Europe Congress in Edinburgh in September 2016.

e) Journal Articles
The work of the project will be disseminated in a number of ways, including through journal articles aimed at a range of both practitioner and academic journals across the project languages.

f) Evaluation and Analysis
To assess/evaluate the project a rigorous mixed methods approach will be adopted, utilising quantitative and qualitative techniques.

i) Evaluation of Parent Education Programme
The impact of the parent education programme will be evaluated in the 3 countries through the use of questionnaires and semi-structured interviews.

Before parents attend the programmes they will complete a survey tool designed to identify their family’s quality of life and level of social inclusion using a survey tool developed by the academic partners.

A sample from each cohort will be interviewed about their experience of daily life, social inclusion and participation by the academic partners using a consistent semi-structured interview format.

These semi-structured interviews will add detail to the quantitative data and enable illustrative case studies to be developed.

Trainers will also be interviewed about their experience of presenting the training – what went well, what didn’t go well, what changes could be made.
Six months after each training programme, parents in the cohort will be re-surveyed using the same standardised tools; and the interview sample will be re-interviewed to identify if and how participation in the programme has impacted in their lives.

Data obtained using these evaluation tools will be analysed by academic partners in the programme evaluation workstream. Findings will be fed back into the project via the multinational meetings.

An annual evaluation report will be produced which will inform the interim and final reports.

ii) Evaluation of Training Materials
After every round of training courses the trainers will meet (by Skype) and identify what went well, what needed improving and will amend and refine the training tools materials as necessary.

The ongoing feedback from the academic partner evaluations will also feed into this process.

Feedback will also be provided by via the project website.

iii) Evaluation of Stakeholder Conferences
The four stakeholder conferences will be assessed through the administration of a standard questionnaire gathering both quantitative and qualitative data about delegates (parents and professionals) views about the quality and benefit of the event.

Information gathered will feed into the planning of future events.

iv) Evaluation of Overall Project
Quantitative and qualitative data will be gathered through the various QA questionnaires and the workstream reports.

External audit will provide qualitative data.

Stakeholders can provide feedback to the partners via their own lines of communication and via the project website.

Data collection and analysis will be undertaken by academic partners, in collaboration with other workstream members.