AutInsight: A Pilot Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) of a Consumer-Informed Parent Support Program for Parents of Autistic Children.

This was a randomised controlled trial — people were assigned to treatments by chance, which is the most reliable way to tell whether a treatment itself caused a change.

It involved 41 people — a modest group, enough to be interesting but not enough to settle a question on its own.

The study ran for 3-month.

The abstract does not include a conclusions section, so this page does not state what the researchers concluded.

This record does not state:

• the ages of the people who took part

This is a plain-language summary of one paper's abstract, not medical advice. Talk to your child's clinician before changing anything.

Journal: Journal of autism and developmental disorders

Year: 2026

Design: Randomized Controlled Trial

Participants: 41

Intervention: Acceptance

Authors: Jia Ying Sarah Lee, Koa Whittingham, Amy E Mitchell

AutInsight is an innovative, consumer-informed parent support program for parents of autistic children grounded in perspectives from qualitative research with autistic adults. The current study outlines the development and evaluation of AutInsight through a pilot randomised controlled trial. Parents (N = 41) of autistic children (10 years and younger) were randomly allocated to AutInsight (n = 20) or care-as-usual (n = 21) and completed online questionnaires across three timepoints (baseline, post-program and 3-month follow-up). Measures include parental sensitivity, parental acceptance and understanding, psychological flexibility, mindful parenting, parental mental health, overall family experience, quality of life, and child behaviours. Intent-to-treat analyses indicated greater rates of improvement for parents allocated to the AutInsight program, with small- to medium-sized effects for parent-reported parental sensitivity (EA-SR mutual attunement d = 0.84, EA-SR child involvement d = 0.50), as well as overall autism family experience (AFEQtotal d = 0.38, AFEQfamily life d = 0.29). Greater rates of improvement were also found in parent-reported child conduct problems (SDQ d = 0.62) and prosocial behaviours (SDQ d = 0.48). No significant results were found in observed parental sensitivity or any other measure. Results suggest preliminary evidence of effectiveness, feasibility and acceptability of the AutInsight program. A larger, fully powered trial is warranted. This trial was prospectively registered with the Australian and New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (Trial ID: ACTRN12623000806662).

Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2026

PMID 40016545

DOI 10.1007/s10803-025-06764-5

This record was extracted from the paper's PubMed abstract and metadata. Full-text methods and risk-of-bias details were not reviewed.