Enhancement of The Physical Environment toward Supporting Autism Care Through Parents Financial Status and Government Support

Abstract

The physical environment is an important part of autism care. Creating care environments tailored towards the individual with autism needs is essential for high-quality care and is increasingly recognised as being associated with improved health and well-being among them. Nowadays, care should be holistic and view the person behind the disability, taking that their perspective and treating them as a unique individual. Despite the emerging focus on autism care approaches, the physical environment is still not considered as an integral part of care, and relatively little attention has been paid to environmental aspects. However, the physical environment has a great potential to facilitate or restrict care processes in a broad range of care settings, not least in care centre facilities for people with autism. The research focuses on ways to determine the inclination on the physical environment to support the autism individual among parents. Structural equation modelling using the partial least squares method with bootstrap will be used to test the research model. The findings of this study indicated that government support received are critical in determining parents’ attitude but there is no substantial relationship between their financial status and attitude. Likewise, parental attitudes play an important role in enhancement of the physical environment toward supporting autism care.