Early Intervention Quiz

C. Providers should NOT focus their efforts on families' areas of weakness. Family-centered practices build upon the strengths and abilities that all families have.

Family-centered practices result in families feeling and displaying their competence and confidence in their own lives. This in turn has a direct and positive influence on their ability to help their child's growth and development.

E. The provider should NOT work with the child apart from peers or other family members. Children learn best when they are engaged with familiar people and things they like and find interesting.

Key Principle 1: Infants and toddlers learn best through everyday experiences and interactions with familiar people in familiar contexts.

B. Providers SHOULD suspend personal judgments. All families have hopes, dreams, and wishes for their children. All families have strengths and capabilities to help their child grow, learn, and be happy.

When providers seek information to identify family strengths to build upon, families feel listened to, treated with respect, not blamed, and ultimately cared about, hopeful, in control of the situation, connected to others, and capable.

Key Principle 2: All families, with the necessary supports and resources, can enhance their children's learning and development.

Providers should not show activities they have planned and then ask families to fit them into their day.

Providers should provide feedback and encouragement as they see the family use incidental teaching moments, and should point out learning opportunities that they observe in the family's naturally occurring activities and routines, working with families to make adaptations to enhance the child's active participation.

Key Principle 3: The primary role of service providers in early intervention is to work with and support the family members and caregivers in children's lives.

A. Providers should NOT make assumptions that families from certain cultural backgrounds are the same as other families of that background. Although individuals of similar cultures may have like customs, be cautious about stereotyping the ways of families based on generalized cultural practices.

Families have individual cultural values and beliefs that influence their priorities. When working with culturally and linguistically diverse families, it is necessary to develop an anchored understanding of their values, beliefs, and concerns to effectively partner with them.

Key Principle 4: The early intervention process, from initial contacts through transition, must be dynamic and individualized to reflect the child's and family members' preferences, learning styles, and cultural beliefs.

E. Providers should NOT write IFSP outcomes that are discipline specific. Children learn holistically, not in isolated, discipline-specific domains.

Family desires, stated as functional outcomes, keep the intervention focus on what is meaningful and helpful. Family routines and activities provide a context for addressing IFSP outcomes through strategies and activities developed with the family.

Key Principle 5: IFSP outcomes must be functional and based on children's and families' needs and family-identified priorities.

D. Providers SHOULD visit other agencies and referral sources to assist them in knowing what early intervention approach the program is using and what that means.

Families are better able to develop meaningful relationships with a consistent primary provider who keeps abreast of the ever-changing needs and priorities of the family. Families can receive consistent and coordinated information from a primary provider who works in partnership with other team members. Families in partnership with the primary provider have access to other supports and services as needed.

Key Principle 6: The family's priorities, needs, and interests are addressed most appropriately by a primary provider who represents and receives team and community support.

B. Providers should NOT believe that having a professional degree or certification means that they do not need further training. Families should receive support and services from professionals with required competencies and credentials, and programs should provide continuing training opportunities beyond initial certification.

Programs should support staff who work with young children and families by actively promoting and helping providers stay abreast of quality early intervention practices.

Key Principle 7: Interventions with young children and family members must be based on explicit principles, validated practices, best available research, and relevant laws and regulations.

A. The family member SHOULD feel as if the needs and concerns of the family are being given priority. Providers' behavior should reflect understanding of and respect for the family's priorities.

When the provider leaves, the family members should feel cared about, hopeful, in control of the situation, connected to others, and capable.

C. Providers SHOULD focus on the parent to develop the family's capacity to help their child develop and be involved in all aspects of family life. The quality of the child's relationship with the parent or other caregivers is key to the child's development.

When parents are overwhelmed with daily life they are less likely to give time or expend energy in activities such as holding, playing, or interacting with the child. Therefore, rather than just targeting the child for intervention services, providers should work to support and strengthen the parent-child relationship, helping the parent understand, interact, and enjoy his or her child in growth-enhancing ways.

A key to doing this is to enhance the parent-provider relationship—seeing the parent as capable, using open and honest communication, respecting family priorities, displaying genuine caring, and being flexible. Supporting adults is distinctive in that adults respond to instruction that links to their priorities; they do not respond to instruction that is not meaningful, useful, or interesting to them.

Learning must happen in a climate of reciprocal respect, where parents and providers feel comfortable sharing their impressions, ideas, and viewpoints.