Community perspectives on support goals for young autistic children: A qualitative investigation

This publication is included in the Autistic Autism Scholarship Project. three authors of this publication are identified as autistic in the project.

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Waddington, H., Jordan, P., Scott, E., Minnell, H., Patrick, L., van der Meer, L., Monk, R., Andrew, J., & Tupou, J. (2023). Community perspectives on support goals for young autistic children: A qualitative investigation. Neurodiversity, 1. https://doi.org/10.1177/27546330231218587

Publication date: 1 Jan 2023 Added to AutiHub: 6 Jul 2026 Type: Article Article language: English
Publisher source (DOI) OpenAlex source

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Authors

Publication authors
9
Publication authors identified as autistic
3 / 9 (33.3%)
  1. Hannah Waddington
  2. Phoebe Jordan *
  3. E. Scott
  4. Hannah Minnell
  5. Lee Patrick *
  1. Larah van der Meer
  2. Ruth Monk *
  3. Janet Andrew
  4. Jessica Tupou

Abstract

Goal setting is integral to the provision of effective support, but little is known about community perspectives on support goals for autistic children. A total of 41 autistic adults, 50 parents of autistic children and 31 clinical professionals living in New Zealand and Australia completed open-ended survey questions regarding their perceptions of support goals for young autistic children. Reflexive thematic analysis resulted in five overarching themes related to early support goals: (a) neurodiversity affirming, (b) change the environment, not the child, (c) helping adults to support autistic children, (d) quality of life and (e) respect boundaries. The perspectives of autistic adults, parents and professionals were mostly aligned.

Bibliography cited by this reference

Cited references are imported from external metadata sources when they are available. The list may be partial.

Cited bibliography overview

These indicators describe the bibliography cited by this publication. An author name is counted each time it appears in one cited reference, so the same person can be counted more than once. Names not yet linked to an author already present in AutiHub are treated as unknown, not as non-autistic. Last computed: 2 Oct 2026 14:02.

Cited references
42
With a DOI
36
Without a DOI, from raw bibliography text
5
14 / 42 (33.3%) cited references include at least one author identified as autistic.
References with data to complete
0 / 42 (0.0%)
References with detected author names
42 / 42 (100.0%)
Without detected author names
0
Without a structured title
0
Without a stable identifier
4
References with raw author names still to review
0
References with external metadata lookup issues
2
These indicators apply to cited references displayed on this page, after technical duplicates have been merged. A reference without a DOI can still support author statistics when a title and author names are available.
Author names detected in the cited bibliography
195
From DOI or external metadata
195
From validated raw bibliography text
0
Raw names already validated
0
Raw names still to review
0
131 / 195 (67.2%) names are linked to an author already present in AutiHub. 64 / 195 (32.8%) names are not yet linked.
Names linked to a person identified as autistic
20 / 195 (10.3%)
Calculated across all author names detected in the cited bibliography. Among names linked to an author already present in AutiHub: 20 / 131 (15.3%). Distinct people identified as autistic: 18 / 179 (10.1%).
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