Pirates for children with learning difficutlies
Research type
Research Study
Full title
How do children with learning difficulties perform using the Pirates Autism Assessment Tool? A Pilot Study
IRAS ID
245769
Contact name
Ian Male
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 6 months, 20 days
Research summary
Assessment for children with possible Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a lengthy process, our own study of practice in UK suggesting this takes around 13 hours of professional time to complete, costing around £800 per child (Galliver et al). Most teams (10/12) employed a two-stage process including an initial “screening” clinic determining the need for the full multidisciplinary diagnostic assessment. One of the challenges to this process is the need to distinguish ASD from other causes of social communication difficulties, the core symptoms, along with resistance to change and repetitive behaviour, that define ASD (APA). This includes children with significant learning difficulties (NICE).
With diagnostic services reporting increasing pressure to meet the growing level of demand, and families having to wait a long time (Autism Achieve Alliance, 2014) for this to be completed, approaches that can improve decision making at initial contact could improve the patient journey and potentially reduce costs. We have developed an automated story that scores emotional cognition in children that could be used alongside parental history and school questionnaire at initial clinical contact, to support decision making. Initial pilot data in children attending for initial assessment for possible ASD, and in a sample of 32 children attending a local primary school, suggests good sensitivity (85%), specificity (92%), and parental and child acceptability in clinic and “typically developing” populations.
Moving forward, one of the questions to answer is whether the automated story can distinguish between children with ASD and other causes of social communication difficulties. Whilst the presence of social communication difficulties points to the possibility of the child having ASD, they can result from, for example, significant language impairment, severe visual impairment, or learning difficulties.
This study, to run concurrently with our ongoing validation work in children with ASD, funded by BMA Helen Lawson award (IRAS Ref: 217234), aims to explore how children with mild to moderate learning difficulties perform in comparison with children with possible ASD and those who are typically developing.REC name
East Midlands - Nottingham 1 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/EM/0296
Date of REC Opinion
27 Nov 2018
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion