College of Education

Meadan Family Lab
Homepage i-PiCS CoCare PD FGT

What is FGT?

The Family Group Training Program provides Spanish-speaking caregivers of children with autism and other developmental delays training and coaching on how to use evidence-based strategies to support the social-communication skills of their children. 
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*At the end of the study, a researcher asks the caregiver about her perceptions related to the naturalistic communication strategies. 

 

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*A caregiver practices using modeling with her child during the study

 

What is the Purpose of the FGT?

The purpose of the program is to support Spanish-speaking families in facilitating the development of their children’s social-communication skills. While there are more than 36 million families in the US that speak Spanish as their primary language, these families who have children with disabilities and delays are underrepresented in research. Thus, we aim to focus on these families and provide them with training and coaching in their home language, Spanish, so they could promote their children development during their everyday interactions with their children.

What are the strategies of FGT?

The four evidence-based strategies implemented as part of the FGT program are those used in the Parent-implemented Communication Strategies (PiCS) program to improve children’s social communication skills:
(a) environmental arrangement,
(b) modeling,
(c) mand-model, and
(d) time delay (Meadan et. al, 2016).
The material of the PiCS Program has all been translated to Spanish for FGT, and all training and coaching are done in Spanish. The program includes group training and individual coaching sessions.