In spite the global and geographic challenges since COVID-19, the project team have been able to make a very positive start, and all key elements are in place for Year 2 of the programme development.

Over the course of the first formative phase of the project (1 July 2022 - 30 June 2023), two groups were working closely together. The Research Group developed a comprehensive research protocol for ethics submission and approval. The research protocol was reviewed and approved by the review committee of the Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health at the University of Cape Town and was later approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee.

Alongside the ethics approval process, the project team developed a data management plan to ensure appropriate data protection and security for research participants.

The global need for evidence-informed support and empowerment programmes for parents of autistic children remains high on the agenda of international agencies such as the WHO and UNICEF. Over the last two years WHO/UNICEF have invested significant effort in relation to Caregiver Support Programmes throughout the globe, and particularly for low- and middle-income countries. These programmes are, however, focused on caregivers of typically developing children and not on children with developmental disabilities such as autism.

The new Global PET programme will be unique in many ways:

• It will be focused on families (and not just parents/primary caregivers) of young people with autism
• It will be free and developed with a global audience in mind (to facilitate the possibility of local adaptations)
• It will use a strengths-based approach (and not just focus on challenges) in the family
• It will include a caregiver capacity element (to support caregiver and family wellbeing)
• It will develop a system of training, supervision and fidelity monitoring (to facilitate scale-up of the programme in a robust way)