Samah El Awady Bassam^1,, Hanan Mohamed Mohamed Tork¹

Background: Mothers play an important role in supporting their children with autism. They not only drive the decision making process, but they take a primary role in delivering the intervention. Consequently, they require advice, emotional support, and training in working with their children through providing education for mothers to update and accurate information about available treatment options and support services for autism. This study aimed to assess the effects of an education program for mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder on mothers and child outcomes. Design: A quasi experimental design was used in this work. Setting: This study was conducted at two settings, namely; Speech and Hearing clinic at Al Ahrar Hospital and Speech clinic at Zagazig University Hospitals. Subjects: Included all accessible autistic children aged 3 – 12 years (n=50) and all accessible mothers of autistic children (n=50). Three tools were used for data collection, namely; A questionnaire, interview sheet, Mother's knowledge regarding the care provided to their autistic children, and Child observation sheet. The results: The highest percentage of mothers had an unsatisfactory and low levels of knowledge and awareness regarding the care provided to autistic children before implementation of the program (80% &76%, respectively). Meanwhile, after implementation of the program, the majority of mothers had a satisfactory and moderate levels of knowledge and awareness with a statistical significance differences (70% & 70%, respectively). Before implementation of the program the half of mothers reported that their autistic child's behavior had a moderate defect level (50 %). While after the implementation of the program this percentage increases to 60% but still moderate. Conclusion: It was found that there were a positive correlation between mothers' knowledge and both of awareness and change in autistic child's behavior scores after implementation of the program. Also, there was a positive correlation between change in autistic children behavior and mothers' awareness scores after implementation of the program. Recommendations: Conduct awareness raising program to improve knowledge and attitude of the community towards the autistic children and their families through mass media.

autism, education program, knowledge, mothers, practice