Research On The Social Work Intervention In People With Autism Spectrum Disorder And Their Families

Predicted by some researches,the number of people with autism spectrum disorder is now more than 10 million in China.2 millions of them are children.Guangzhou is one of the cities which develop the most advanced intervention for autism spectrum disorder,gathering resources of diagnosing and treating autism spectrum disorder in Guangdong Province.Therefore,this research took Guangzhou as an example to understand and analyze the existence conditions of these families,and to see how the social support system throughout the life course satisfies resource demand.At the same time,in China,Guangzhou is the main land of developing professional social work services,which government investment in purchasing social work services ranks among the best.Thus this research further explored how social work intervention services helped these families improve their existence conditions in social support system.In terms of “existence”,the contradictions between the supply and demand of resources were caused by the gap between developing resources and growing people with autism spectrum disorder.Nowadays,the contradictions may be further sharpened.In terms of“conditions”,their families at different stages of the life course may have to deal with the troubles in mental,cognitive,economic,employment and elderly life,which jointly reflect the practical demands of basic life security and development.In response to above existing demands,these families at their stage of life course nearly receive services from corresponding formal social support in Guangzhou,including public hospitals,rehabilitation training organizations,the support system for scholastic education,the support system for employment,the support system for families' elderly life,parent associations and other four types as listed.Informal social support that is rather close to them families,such as peers,relatives,friends,neighbors and volunteer,serves as an important complement to formal social support.Generally speaking,the resources are of various kinds through the social support system of the families affected by autism spectrum disorder,but in fact the resources are very limited.Moreover,the resources are distributed unevenly in each life course stage,and it isn't smooth to interact and refer among support systems in different stages.Furthermore,policy subsidies are mainly achieved through formal social support.From the perspective of social support,social work intervention service is feasible and necessary.Social work service agencies are the main social work services providers for these families.This paper summarized the existing social work intervention services based on the time lines of life course from finding symptoms to getting old,and the range from the services of microsystem to policy advocacy.The existing social work intervention services also reflect the use of social support network.It can be concluded from the services outcome that social work intervention services can improve existence conditions of these families.At present,services show the problems as follows.First,social workers do not well understand autism spectrum disorder.Second,some of the staffs without social work professional background do not well understand social work.Third,services from social workers are weak,loose and not systematic.In the United States,it's the worth learning from the service concepts of interdisciplinary,multisystemic,which are used to the progress social work involves in these families.Finally,this paper in combination with the concept of social policy for development and back to the structure of social support system,discussed how to optimize the social work intervention services for families at different stages of life course in the process of welfare delivery.