Palestra convidada no IP-USP: Dr Kathy Leadbitter da University of Manchester.

Evento online na quarta dia 24 de setembro as 09h horário de Brasília. A palestra será em inglês.

Mini Bio: Dr Kathy Leadbitter is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Health Sciences, University of Manchester, UK. Kathy’s research focuses on the development and evaluation of services, supports and interventions for autistic people and their families in the UK and South Asia. She is passionate about pragmatic and high-impact research that will directly improve the lives of autistic children and adults around the world. Her work is underpinned by a strong neurodiversity-affirmative and social justice ethos.

Title: Developing and testing a new programme to support caregivers following their child’s autism diagnosis

Caregivers can experience significant challenges following their child’s autism diagnosis and often seek informational, relational and emotional support. UK provision is patchy, largely unevidenced, and a source of dissatisfaction for families and professionals. In this talk, I will outline how we worked with stakeholders to develop a new group-based post-diagnostic programme called Empower-Autism to support the mental health, wellbeing, and adjustment of caregivers. I will then present the findings of a large randomised controlled trial (REACH-ASD Trial) investigating the clinical effectiveness of the Empower-Autism programme on caregiver mental health and a range of other caregiver, family and child secondary outcomes. This is the first fully-powered trial to show a statistically- and clinically-significant effect on mental health in caregivers of autistic children.