Research On Intervention Strategies Of The Educational Group To Improve The Self-Care Ability Of Preschool Autistic Children

Since the beginning of the 21 st century,the prevalence of autism in the world has shown significant growth trends.Autism has gradually become a public issue,attracting attention from all walks of life.The ability to self-care in life is closely related to the day-to-day life of people with autism,particularly whether they can survive independently in adulthood.At present,however,the domestic community has an inadequate understanding of the importance and urgency of improving self-care capacity in people with autism,and the research on intervention strategies is in its infancy.Pre-school is a critical time for children with autism to improve their self-care abilities.To promote the development of autism rehabilitation in China,it is important to study effective intervention strategies from the perspective of social work for preschool-age children with autism in line with national conditions.From a social work perspective,this study conducted practice and research on the specific issues of group work to improve the ability of pre-school autistic children to care for themselves in life.The researcher collected research data through interviews,participatory observations and scaling techniques,and used preschool-aged autistic children from the K-Rehabilitation Center in Qingdao as subjects to fully understand the subjective and objective issues that limit the development of autistic children’s ability to take care of themselves in life.Through investigation and analysis,it is found that autistic children in the center generally face difficulties in self-care due to their slow capacity development;parents have insufficient awareness of the importance of self-care in life,lack of rehabilitation intervention knowledge,and low self-efficacy;the center and special education teachers lack motivation to open self-care courses.Therefore,it is of great practical importance to jointly use direct intervention strategies for children and indirect intervention strategies for parents,based on behaviorism,social learning and empowerment theory.The group activity was attended by four pre-school children and four parents.The service content targeted eight skills in four main areas of self-care,namely eating,washing,toileting and dressing,and 16 group activities were conducted.The activities include group games,task analysis of each skill,flow chart tips,chain training,parental guidance,communication and sharing,etc.Using the ABLLS-R system for pre-and post-test evaluation,it was found that group work interventions were able to significantly improve the individual and total scores of self-care in life for four autistic children,and enhance the rehabilitation intervention ability and self-efficacy of parents.In addition,the group-teaching model can save parents’ tuition,save the organization’s labor costs,making it suitable for teaching self-care skills to children with autism in rehabilitation facilities.Finally,through the summary and reflection on the activity design,practical process of the group work and the application of social work in the field of autism rehabilitation,the suggestions on social work to promote the improvement of autistic children’s ability to take care of themselves in life are put forward from different aspects.