Early Interventionists' Ratings of Family-Centered Practices in Natural Environments

Abstract

Part C early intervention services should be family centered and occur in the context of families' natural environments and daily routines; yet research suggests that many early interventionists continue to work directly with the child and lack a full understanding of how they can implement best practices in the community. To help improve this implementation gap, discrepancy tools can be used to identify early interventionists' perspectives of their typical and ideal practices and gain knowledge of early interventionists' understanding of family-centered practices. The purpose of this study was to examine early interventionists' typical practices, ideal practices, and family consultation beliefs prior to one state's adoption of a family-centered early intervention model. Ninety-nine early interventionists completed a questionnaire examining their practices and beliefs. Results demonstrated that ratings of typical practices, ideal practices, and family consultation beliefs were relatively high overall, and early interventionists rated their typical practices only slightly lower than ideal practices. Item-level analysis, however, revealed a large discrepancy between typical and ideal ratings for the item related to working with the child versus the caregiver. Implications of our findings and recommended future directions are discussed.

Factors That Contributed to Early Intervention Providers’ Use of Caregiver Coaching During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Recommended practices in the field suggest that EI providers play a supportive role by enacting capacity-building practices, which enhance caregivers’ ability to implement interventions with their children within their everyday routines. Research shows a gap between recommended practices and what actually happens in the field; in other words, EI providers do not always use capacity-building practices with families and tend to use child-directed practices instead (Decker et al, 2021; Romano & Schnurr, 2022; Tomeny et al, 2021). When implementing child-directed practices, EI providers work directly with the child to increase the child’s skills (e.g., playing with them, reading them books, and using discipline-specific strategies), rather than promoting family members’ abilities.…”