This resource summarises the evidence about the effectiveness of parent-focused interventions designed to support children with intellectual disability and autistic children who display behaviours of concern. The review aims to support practitioners who work with children with disability and their families, but may not be specialists in providing disability support, to understand what parent-focused interventions include and the characteristics of effective interventions.

This review includes general research evidence on the effectiveness of interventions used to support children with disability who may display behaviours of concern and their families. It does not include information about the requirements of providers working with this cohort under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) or specific services funded through the NDIS (e.g. behaviour support plans).

Parent-focused interventions can be categorised into 2 broad groups:

1. parent support interventions (practitioner-to-parents) that include parent education support or parent psychosocial support
2. parent-mediated interventions (practitioner-to-parent-to-child) that include parent skills training or parent coaching.

Evidence suggests that:

• Parents can be trained or coached using parent-mediated interventions to provide effective behaviour support to their children with disability.
• Parent skills training interventions of varying formats (online and in-person; individual and group-based) are often effective at improving the behaviours of children with disability.
• Parent coaching interventions are usually delivered to individual families (online and in-person) and can be effective at improving the behaviours of children with disability. Some studies report large improvements in children’s behaviours.
• Nearly all effective parent-focused interventions encourage or train parents to understand the functions of the behaviours of concern displayed by their child with disability (a functional approach).