How do parents experience “Watch Me Play!” alongside the multi-disciplinary assessment of their under-five year old’s social communication difficulties? An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis

The project aimed to explore parents’ experiences of Watch Me Play! alongside the assessment of their under-five year old for social communication disorders, including possible autism. WMP sessions were scheduled fortnightly in parallel with routine meetings comprising the assessment process within the multi-disciplinary assessment team. WMP clinicians, all child and adolescent psychoanalytic psychotherapists, conducted the WMP sessions. Semi-structured interviews were designed to take place pre-and post-intervention during which parents were asked to talk about their experiences. Clinicians were not interviewed and the WMP intervention had no bearing on the outcome of the assessment. Parents of children at the top of the existing waiting list were invited to take part: four took part in pre-WMP interviews. Two subsequently withdrew leaving two who completed the full study. Data from interviews (four pre-WMP, two post-WMP) was analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. The study was very small and so findings cannot be generalised but analysis of the data indicated that for some, WMP enabled greater attunement between parent and child and could contribute to greater confidence in parents’ experience of relationships with clinicians and in the assessment process.