A number of early educational intervention programs have been developed in the last decades with some of them having strong scientific evidence of their effectiveness (Wong et al, 2014). A subgroup of those methods has a focus on parent-training as a mean to obtain best results in child development. Parent-training research on early educational intervention with autism have demonstrated that (Ingersoll and Dvortcsak, 2010):

• Parents can learn to implement strategies with a high degree of fidelity
• Results include better generalization and maintenance of skills
• It increases parent’s optimisms about their children’s future
• It decreases parent’s stress levels
• It is cost-effective

Families of children with ASD should be provided the opportunity to learn techniques for teaching their child new skills. These opportunities should include not only didactic sessions, but also ongoing consultation in which individualized problem-solving, including in-home observations or training, occur for a family, as needed, to support improvements at home as well as at school (NRC, 2001).

Research has indicated that parent training is time- and cost-effective. Due to this, STAY-IN project will focus on this subgroup of early educational intervention programs in order to tackle the provision of educational services for young children with autism (and their families) from low-income EU regions.

Teaching and training professionals (teachers, language therapists, psychologies) and families together, may facilitate the coordination of early intervention for children with ASD, developing specific intervention skills in both groups. Organisations providing services to young children with autism find it difficult to select the most appropriate early educational intervention model for their particular context. There are no locally developed and validated early educational intervention models in the three participating countries, and organisations are forced to select models developed elsewhere if they want to provide evidence-based (scientifically validated) interventions.

The main objective of the project is to share good practices about the most appropriate parent-training based early educational intervention program for ASD.