**Author details**

**•** Greater public awareness of ASD is promoted through parental advocacy, use of media and

In sum, the model envisages a community-based, family centred service based on partnership

Equally this model generates further research questions. Chief among them are the following: **•** Are children with ASD who experience these styles of services more socially included within

**•** If they are included, does this reduce their symptoms of ASD – are they socially more

**•** Are the children able to gain entry to mainstream schooling and what supports are needed

**•** Can schools incorporate elements of this model by becoming more family and community-

**•** Do parents who experience this model show sustained improvements in their family

Parents in most countries realise their important role in supporting themselves and their children despite financial constraints and changing ideologies [19] but in practice in the developing societies, their role is not clearly defined and their presence is not welcomed by clinicians and professionals. In these societies based on the dominant service provision for children with developmental disabilities, parents themselves preferred to act passively. In the case of ASD in Iran, parents still need to struggle to be trained and confident enough to be acknowledged and valued and to be recognised by the society as an integrated group. If the needs of families of children with ASD are to be met through parental empowerment, it seems that a more co-ordinated and coherent CM is needed. Since such a CM has not yet been developed, the family researchers, especially those who study more complicated families, such as a family of children with ASD, have to choose among the available CMs. The experiences which were mentioned here have also required other conceptual models and it could be argued that they have further validated the researcher's choice of framework in different studies on parental empowerment. The complex nature of empowerment has contributed to the adopted

The nature of the phenomena under investigation urged the researcher to adopt different CMs. As the research went on, it became evident that the adopted CM had some limitations in dealing with aspects of the empowerment process in parents of children with ASD in Iran. In this case the adopted CMs need expansion each time to justify the findings. This expansion

communicative with fewer behaviour management issues?

**•** How effective is this model for families living in rural settings?

briefing for community leaders.

242 Autism Spectrum Disorder - Recent Advances

working among all the stakeholders.

their families and community?

to sustain their placements?

functioning and emotional wellbeing?

focussed?

**10. Conclusions**

approach.

Sayyed Ali Samadi1\*, Hadi Samadi2 and Roy McConkey1

\*Address all correspondence to: s.samadi@ulster.ac.uk

1 Centre for Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities-Institute of Nursing Research, University of Ulster, N. Ireland, UK

2 Department of Philosophy of Science, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
