Centering Autistic Perspectives in Behavioral Intervention Discussions

TREC will be co-developed in Phase 1, to focus on ensuring the presence of at least 3 key components: 1) a listening phase (focused on unconditionally hearing the experiences of autistic participants), 2) an acknowledgement phase (in which the experiences, including but not limited to harms and trauma, of autistic participants will be expressly addressed and acknowledged), 3) a negotiation/priority-setting phase, in which participants will collaboratively identify goals for future CER.

The SEED Method is a PCORI-supported multilevel stakeholder engagement model, using a participatory framework to develop stakeholder priorities. The core premise of SEED is creating a level playing field for stakeholders, wherein participants learn how to collaboratively identify their own community's priorities, and then refine them together. It involves convening participatory Topic Groups of stakeholders, assembled based on their experience and knowledge of the area of focus (in this case, autism and ABA). It also involves additional consultative stakeholder participants to fill in key gaps in representation; this element may or may not be present in thi SEED iteration, based on the CAC-led adaptation. SEED participants convene over a period of time (adapted to the needs of the specific group, and will be matched to the length of TREC here) to conceptualize (i.e., learn how to build a conceptual model and conduct exercises to do so), generate questions (i.e., review the conceptual m