The last decade has seen a steady increase in distant services in special education followed by a huge burst stimulated by the COVID-19 lockdown. In the pre-pandemic era distant learning was mostly limited to educational programs targeting parents and special education practitioners; the state of lockdown has imposed drastic restrictions on person-to-person special education interventions normally forming the backbone of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) treatment, and forced the practitioners to accept web-based sessions, often mediated by parents, as a possible alternative. This presentation covers recent advances in distant services in ASD support and is specifically focused on distant education programs developed and implemented by Our Sunny World, the largest Russian NGO delivering support and treatment to children and adults with ASD. Our Sunny World provided more than 8500 web-based sessions to children with ASD and several webinar programs covering more than 1000 families. A series of stakeholder surveys (over 120 ASD-related professionals, over 250 parent participants) has provided valuable insights on challenges and opportunities related to distant services in ASD support. Overall, the distant services were assessed as very successful. One of the most important benefits was related to greatly enhanced parental engagement and the improvement of parent-child bonding.

Establishing distant services in ASD support and treatment: challenges and opportunities