Parental Perspectives of Occupational Therapy in an Equine Environment for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The research article explores the impact of occupational therapy in an equine environment for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and the perspectives of parents about the effectiveness of the treatment and its impacts on their child’s everyday life.

Research Methodology

The research can be broken down into two stages: quantitative and qualitative. For the quantitative part, the researchers looked at measurable data, such as improvements in the social communication, self-regulation, occupational performance, and social motivation of the children diagnosed with ASD participating in therapy in an equine environment.

• In the qualitative phase, the researchers then aimed to utilize parental perspectives to describe the children’s experiences of the intervention and its influences on everyday life.
• In this phase, five parents were selected to participate in two rounds of semi-structured interviews.
• The data from these interviews were then analyzed using a method called theoretical thematic analysis.

Findings

• Despite some concerns, most parents found the intervention to be appropriate and acceptable. The concerns were not detailed in the abstract, but it is suggested they were generally outweighed by the overall benefits of the therapy.
• The impacts of the therapy were observed in different areas of the children’s lives, such as their social communication, self-regulation, occupational performance and social motivation, suggesting a successful application of the therapy.

Future Work

As next steps, researchers suggest creating a manual for the intervention and assessing its feasibility across a broader range of practice sites.

• The intent behind creating a manual is to simplify the replication of the intervention across different settings, facilitating more widespread use of the approach.
• The feasibility assessment would determine how the therapy can be implemented across different occupational therapists, a wider range of children with ASD, and their parents. Such an assessment would help identify potential bottlenecks or barriers in the implementation of the therapy, and therefore, help mitigate them.