The psycho-social experiences of fathers of autistic children.
Research type
Research Study
Full title
‘How do fathers of children diagnosed as autistic experience psycho-social support, and how does this impact upon the father-child relationship and management of their child’s behavioural challenges?’
IRAS ID
317780
Contact name
Louise Cooper
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Sheffield
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 9 months, 14 days
Research summary
The aim of this research is to explore how fathers of autistic children experience social and emotional support. This is important as there is evidence that fathers may experience feelings of isolation and exclusion from services (Potter 2017). The needs of fathers are reported to be different to those of the mother (Wang and West 2016). Fathers may shelter their emotions from the rest of the family (Lashewicz et al 2016), and and may experience loss of friendships, and poor comprehension of their child's autism diagnosis. This superficial data requires further exploration to develop a deep understanding of the fathers' needs. The fathers' relationship with their child and management of their child's behavioural challenges may also be impacted via their psycho-social support experiences, and again this is something that we need to comprehend further.
To extract this information a semi-structured interview method will be utilised to facilitate deep exploration of the fathers experiences. Understanding how fathers of this population of children experience social and emotional support is important in identification of psycho-social interventions specifically taylored for fathers. .REC name
Wales REC 6
REC reference
22/WA/0300
Date of REC Opinion
21 Oct 2022
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion