Interven

Key Principles in Service Delivery

Developmentally Appropriate Care

• Provide support

• Exhibit patience

• Have reasonable developmental/age-appropriate expectations

• Use slow, simple instructions

• Break down tasks into smaller steps when needed

• Assist child in focus and attention on instructions

• Provide consistency and structure

• Provide choices, when possible

• Give time to practice and for information processing

• Promote socialization with other children/siblings

• Incorporate therapy activities into daily routines

Family-Centered Care

• Remember professionals come and go, family are constant

• Support family/professionals—collaboration throughout continuum of care

• Honor family traditions and diversity

• Acknowledge family strengths and methods of coping

• Recognize developmental needs of child and family

• Consider emotional and financial support needs of child and family

• Create flexible, culturally sensitive, family-responsive care systems

Culturally Competent/Sensitive Care

• Recognize culture-identified definitions of “family”

• Appreciate that family choices may be based in cultural traditions

• Integrate cultural knowledge into facility policies and procedures

• Work within and use the support of community helping networks

• Design and implement services to meet the unique needs of individuals and families

• Direct service by culturally preferred choices, not culturally blind or culturally free interventions

• Seek to provide equal and nondiscriminatory access to services

Using Natural Environments

• Provide services in settings that are familiar to the child/family and represent the places where they carry out their routine daily activities (home, child care centers and preschools, playgrounds, libraries, shopping centers, restaurants)

• Incorporate the people and things that are a part of the child’s natural environment (siblings, grandparents, neighbors, etc.)

• Provide practice with a focus on function and socialization

Communicating With Children

• Allow time for the child to feel comfortable; take a position at the child's eye level, and speak in a quiet, confident voice

• Avoid actions the child may perceive as threatening (e.g., sudden advances, extended eye contact)

• Try communicating through the parent/caregiver or through transition objects (dolls, puppets, stuffed animals) with shy or withdrawn children

• Use simple words; short sentences; and clear, specific, positively oriented directions and suggestions

• Be honest and encourage expression of concerns and fears

• Provide opportunities for older children to talk when parents are not present, when appropriate

Consultation/Collaboration

• Steps in the process

  • Identify and clarify problem

  • Consider alternative solutions

  • Select, implement, and monitor solutions

  • Evaluate solutions

• Collaborative consultation—process by which regular and special education teachers or teachers and specialists work toward common goals with shared responsibilities

• Methods for including consultation on IFSP or IEP

  • Consult with child at specified time

  • Consult with teacher/family at specified time

  • Consult as a support to direct intervention

  • Consult listed as an objective/benchmark to support a specific IEP goal

  • Consult listed in the "specially designed instructions" section or as an aid/support to personnel

Special Intervention Considerations for Children and Adolescents—Key: Indications—Contraindications—Take ...