Using a Simple Social Communication Chart to Work with Parents

Background:  Tunisian and African context in general are marked by a shortage of human and technical resources to deliver structured and intensive interventions to the fast growing number of children diagnosed with ASD. The race to meet theoretical standards of effective care, such as stated in manualized interventions, seems useless. Hence the importance of simpler interventions using available resources, mainly parents.

Objectives:  to design a simple tool for the follow-up of interventions coordinated with parents and educators

Methods:  Compilation of literature on social communication development milestones and different interventions (behavioural, developmental) to foster their acquisition, confronted to clinical practice with more than 1000 children with ASD and their families.

Results:  the social communication chart is a simple grid in three segments:

1. Basics of communication: eye contact, joint attention, motor imitation, vocal imitation, receptive language, proto-imperative gestures.
2. Symbolic communication: pretend play, sharing experiences, proto-declarative gestures, expressive language
3. Social communication: narrative skills, social rules, theory of mind, pragmatic language.

It was used with more than 200 children and their caregivers and led to more involvement of parents. Each acquisition was explained with appropriate actions proposed to parents as “homework” and checked and rated at follow-up sessions (videos)

Conclusions:  In our experience, practical and simple actions, proposed by clinicians with a minimal level of structuration, and applied by parents and educators under supervision, can lead to robust improvements for children with ASD.