Parent Support Group for Korean Immigrant Families of Individuals With Autism and Developmental Disabilities: Use of...

Korean immigrant families face complex barriers to accessing services for their children with autism and developmental disabilities due to intersecting cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic factors. However, there is limited information in the literature on strategies to close this gap. This tutorial reports on leveraging an academic-community partnership to establish and sustain a parent support group for Korean immigrant families of children with autism and other developmental disorders.

Academic and community partners worked together to develop family-centered support. The partnership focused on iteratively tailoring support to a localized context to increase knowledge, self-efficacy, and community support for navigating service systems. The development of the parent support group progressed through three phases: (a) establishing two separate support groups led by a parent and a faculty member, (b) merging the groups and building capacity to empower families, and (c) supporting community partners in formalizing the group and securing grant funding for partner-driven initiatives. In all phases, academic partners contributed university resources, whereas community partners provided insider knowledge to create effective programming.

This approach has resulted in a strong, ongoing academic-community partnership that has lasted for more than 2 decades and successfully engaged over 400 families. The lessons learned offer an example of how to reduce barriers to autism-related services by leveraging community strengths and fostering collaboration and by revisiting both the partnership and supports for families to more strongly address community priorities.