Satisfaction and Struggles: Family Perceptions of Early Intervention Services

Abstract

Programs that provide services for young children with special needs are now planning ways to support the child's family as well. In response to the great diversity in the way programs define and implement a family-centered approach to service delivery, researchers at the Beach Center on Families and Disability designed and tested the Family-Centered Program Rating Scale (FamPRS). In addition to being used as a component of a comprehensive program evaluation, the FamPRS may be used for program planning, staff development, and research. This article describes how the rating scale was developed, provides information about its psychometric properties, and makes recommendations for its appropriate uses.Programs that provide services for young children with special needs are undergoing great changes. Instead of working only with the child, they now plan ways to support the child's family as well, in order to maximize the benefit of services for the child and for the family. Although there is an increased awareness of the need for family-centered services, there is great diversity in the way programs define and implement such an approach to service delivery. Furthermore, as many professionals are discovering, changing to a family-centered approach often requires a major reconceptualization of early intervention (Meisels, 1992;

Relationship of Perceived Adequacy of Services, Family–Professional Partnerships, and Family Quality of Life in Early Childhood Service Programmes

“…The tendency to give relatively high satisfaction ratings in evaluations of early intervention services has been noted by other researchers (Bailey et al, 2003;Johnson, Duffett, Farkas, & Wilson, 2002;McNaughton, 1994;McWilliam et al, 1995). Indeed, the findings with respect to partnership satisfaction and service adequacy ratings are consistent with other national-level studies in the United States such as the NEILS Study (Bailey et al, 2003(Bailey et al, , 2004.…”

Parental Satisfaction with a Home-based Intervention for Developmentally Delayed Children in Switzerland: A Survey over a 10-year Period

“…The analysis of literature reveals a high level of general parental satisfaction with early childhood services (McWilliam et al, 1995;Stallard & Lenton, 1992;Stallard, 1996). Satisfaction is neither dependent on demographic variables (child's gender, age or ethnic background; Martin et al, 2003), nor on socio-economic variables, although a significant number of parents of low socio-economic status may be found among dissatisfied parents (Britner & Phillips, 1995).…”

Family and Professional Perspectives on Early Intervention

“…Studies reporting consumer satisfaction have addressed both program and systemlevel concerns such as developing individualized family service plans (IFSPs) and assisting families in finding out about services (Summers et al, 1990); creating opportunities for family decision making (Able-Boone, Sandall, Loughry, &C Frederick, 1990); accessing and coordinating services (Able-Boone, Goodwin, Sandall, Gordon, &c Martin, 1992); obtaining therapies and accessing inclusive placements (McWilliam et al, 1995); arranging childcare (Warfield & Hauser-Cram, 1996); and making the transition to kindergarten (Hamblin-Wilson & Thurman, 1990).…”