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Meeting FACES: Preliminary Findings from a Community Workshop for Minority Parents of Children with Autism in Central North Carolina

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Abstract

In North Carolina (NC), there are many resources designed to support the needs of children with autism and their families, and yet a troubling gap in underserved families’ access to those services. To address this gap, the Meeting FACES workshop was designed to: (a) provide an opportunity for parents, educators, and service providers to build partnerships, (b) provide parents with opportunities to learn about available autism services in their communities, and (c) assess the needs of underrepresented families of children with autism in NC. Findings indicate that minority families of children with autism in central NC require more supports to access and navigate services. Additionally, participants were very satisfied with Meeting FACES and were interested in participating in future FACES programming.

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Funding

This study was supported by North Carolina State University (http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100007703).

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Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

JNP designed the study, conducted data collection, data analysis, and wrote the manuscript. ALT conducted data collection, data analysis, and wrote the manuscript. LMD, KM, and EC conducted data collection and contributed to manuscript preparation.

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Correspondence to Jamie N. Pearson.

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All authors declared that they have no conflict of interest.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Research Involving Human Participants

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Pearson, J.N., Traficante, A.L., Denny, L.M. et al. Meeting FACES: Preliminary Findings from a Community Workshop for Minority Parents of Children with Autism in Central North Carolina. J Autism Dev Disord 50, 1–11 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-019-04295-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-019-04295-4

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