Caregiver Coaching Strategies for Early Intervention Providers

Abstract

Early intervention (EI) providers increasingly coach and collaborate with caregivers to strengthen and support caregiver-child interactions. The EI providers learning to coach other adults benefit from knowing what, exactly, they should do to support caregivers. This article serves two purposes. First, it proposes an operationally defined, theoretically based, and reliably used set of definitions (behaviors) that describe coaching strategies that providers can use to support caregiver learning. Second, it suggests possible applications of these definitions for EI providers, administrators, and researchers. We discuss underlying theories of adult learning and the process by which the definitions were developed. Preliminary evidence regarding the utility of these definitions is presented by using videotape data of provider coaching practices in home visits from three different studies. Descriptive data from these programs and home visits illustrate how the coaching definitions can be used to distinguish implementation differences and how they could be used to support professional development efforts for EI coaching and consultation.

Early Intervention, IDEA Part C Services, and the Medical Home: Collaboration for Best Practice and Best Outcomes

“…This method has been shown to build the capacities of a parent or other caretaker as new skills (both in the family member and the child) are acquired. 57,58 Coaching techniques to support parents are used by therapists in the natural learning environment and can be modified and applied by the pediatrician in the medical home process. [59][60][61][62] Key elements in the coaching process are shown in Table 1.…”

Early Intervention Provider Use of Child Caregiver–Teaching Strategies

“…One primary factor is the inconsistency within the literature and among researchers about what behavior or actions occur when providers are helping families learn what to do with their children. Frequently used terms are collaborative consultation (Basu, Salisbury, & Thorkildsen, 2010;Cambray-Engstrom & Salisbury, 2010;Klein & Chen, 2008;Woods, Wilcox, Friedman, & Murch, 2011), coaching (Dunn, Cox, Foster, Mische-Lawson, & Tanquary, 2012;Friedman, Woods, & Salisbury, 2012;Keilty, 2010;Rush & Shelden, 2011), or caregiver teaching Colyvas, Sawyer, & Campbell, 2010). A set of definitions, proposed by Friedman and colleagues (2012), are the basis of a measure of coaching.…”

“…The eight coaching strategies include: (a) conversation and information sharing (CIS); (b) observation (OB); (c) direct teaching (DT); (d) demonstration with narration (DEM/DN); (e) guided practice with feedback (GPF); (e) caregiver practice with feedback (CPF); (f) joint interaction (JI); (g) problem-oriented reflection (PS/R); and two noncoaching strategies: (a) provider works directly with the child (CF) and (b) other. Several different studies have used these definitions to quantify providers' actions during home visits (Friedman et al, 2012;Salisbury & Cushing, 2013;Marturana & Woods, 2012).…”

“…These researchers define five explicit caregiver-teaching strategies that generally comprise a subset of the broader set of coaching practices defined by Friedman et al (2012).…”

“…Other practices, some of which are defined by Friedman et al (2012) as coaching, are considered as non-caregiver-teaching strategies including joint interaction with the child (JIC), working with child without explanation (i.e., direct hands on intervention; direct teaching; WCE), observation (OB), and other (O) (e.g., caregiver not in room; provider on cell phone) (Campbell & Sawyer, 2008). Both groups of researchers have measured provider-caregiver interactions by rating videotaped samples of home visits and recording the occurrence of coaching practices or caregiver-teaching strategies at 30-second intervals.…”