Team Based Early Intervention

I've been invited to share my perspectives on Team Based Early Intervention Services. This is an opportunity for me to share my passion for Early Intervention and my excitement about this momentous change in the way these services are provided in my state. I have already shared some of this information via YouTube with our state's Parent Training and Information Center.

Supporting families is important work. It is important that professionals who support families meet families where they are at and assume confidence and competence. It is also essential that families have the opportunity to participate in a voluntary family-directed assessment which allows them to identify their concerns, priorities and resources and enables them to develop functional, family-centered and meaningful outcomes for their child and family.

It is critical that professionals who support families are aware of current evidence-based research which demonstrates that there are ways to assist families.  That if we are to incorporate new skills into our repertoire we must have an introduction or illustration, practice and then have an opportunity to evaluate and reflect on our efforts. Carl Dunst, and his team at the Orelena Hawks Puckett Institute, has done considerable research on how to empower parents and support their confidence and capacity, as they care for their child with an infant and toddler with a disability.  

Using Team Based Services that encourage providers to work as a team, rather than a series of individuals, is the first step. The next step is to provide professional development that help professionals to strengthen parent capacity as part of early intervention.

Want to Learn More?

Carl Dunst Research Scientist, Orelena Hawks Puckett Institute, NC. http://www.puckett.org/  The Institute Centers include, Center for Evidence-Based Practices www.evidencebasedpractices.org, 

Center for Excellence in Early Childhood Education www.ceecenc.org, 

Center for Innovative and Promising Practices www.innovativepractices.org, 

Center for Improving Community Linkages www.communitylinkages.org, 

Center for Practical Evaluation www.practicalevaluation.org, 

Center for Dissemination and Utilization www.utlization.info. http://leadership-2012.events.tadnet.org/uploads/879/download

Dunst, C.J., Trivette, C.M., & Hamby, D.W. (2010). Meta-analysis of the effectiveness of four adult learning methods and strategies. International Journal of Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning, 3(1), 91-112.

Dunst, C. J., and; Trivette, C. M. (2009). Capacity-building family systems intervention practices. Journal of Family Social Work, 12(2), 119-143.

Swanson, J., Raab, M., & Dunst, C.J. (2011). Strengthening family capacity to provide young children everyday natural learning opportunities. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 9(1), 66-80.

Dunst, C.J., and; Trivette, C.M. (2009). Meta-analytic structural equation modeling of the influences of family-centered care on parent and child psychological health. International Journal of Pediatrics, 2009, 1-9.

Is it stealing?

One of the things that I love about Web 2.0 is how free many folks are with their information and expertise. I've been researching how to assist people when researching on the internet. For me that has lead me down many other paths--I was the type of student who could spend hours looking up one word in the dictionary, because I found so many other interesting words on my way to the one I wanted/needed.  But I digress. 


Researching on the Internet
I've been tooling around today over on the NICHCY website. I've always turned to NICHCY for information on early intervention and special education. They've also got some great information on sharing or disseminating information and how to research.
Steal This!
The section I love the most, is their page called steal these dissemination strategies. They have model language for social media policies, Facebook posts and tweets and they encourage sharing, re-purposing and linking like this.
So I don't think it's stealing if it is encouraged, but I love that it is encouraged! What do you steal--or shall I say repurpose?  And do you make sure to mention where you originally found your material?

Family-Directed Assessments

The new Part C regulations have been revised to place additional importance on the voluntary family-directed assessment. For some this is new information, for others it is simply a confirmation of the how to perform initial and ongoing assessments. To create an IFSP that truly serves a child and their family, it is important that families decide if they want to participate in a family-directed assessment, who is involved (parents, grandparents, siblings, caregivers, even a neighbor), and how much to share (everything, something, nothing--though this won't really lead to an effective IFSP). The regulations require that qualified personnel use an assessment tool and an interview when performing a voluntary family-assessment.

Preparation

But how can families prepare? Families report that the initial assessment can be a whilrwind of new information and terms. One way is to provide families with a form that they can fill out before meeting with the assessment team.That form can help families to organize their thoughts, and begin the process of thinking about their concerns, priorities and resources. 

Training

Providing training to families on outcomes, what they are, and how families enrolled in early intervention can develop both child-focused and family-focused outcomes can be beneficial. Families and professionals also need to learn the difference between Part C outcomes and Part B goals. It can also be helpful to inform families and professionals about how goals in Part B can be developed that are student-focused or teacher-focused.

Creating a Communications Plan

One of the board's I sit on is reevaluating how it is communicating with its membership. To be honest, that makes it sound like we've been communicating. Unfortunately, we've been too busy doing, to communicate. However, we know that we cannot grow or really be successful if we don't stop for a bit and think about how we communicate.

Self-Assessment
We are using our communications campaign as an adjunct to our membership recruitment campaign. Our first step was to survey our current members so that we could have a better idea of who are members are and what they need from the organization. We also asked them if they had interacted with our website, Facebook fanpage, twitter stream or our website. We then looked at our organization's stated mission and compared that to our current membership.


Making a Plan
The next step was to decide on our outcome. Our communications outcome is to increase membership. We needed to decide how we could use our communication strategy to increase membership. Now I'm  not going to give the particulars of our plan, but we decided that we needed a calendar that identified topic areas for each month, then we needed to insure that our information was posted across our different sites. 


Wait we aren't all proficient with social media
We needed to take a step back. It turns out we needed to go over how to do effectively use each of our media sites. We needed to learn how to use the sites as ourselves and as the organization. We needed to prepare primers on how to use each site. We also needed to have a short campaign to show the board how to share information across platforms. 

Sharing Information

We've asserted that Web 2.0 can be used to share information with families in previous posts here, here and here. And as we stated in the Web 2.0  post, one thing to think about is how information that is already out there can be re-purposed.

Repurposed?
Yes, reused, rewritten, reshared. Think of it as upcycling for information. There are great websites out there with tons of well-written information. Here's a sampling of my favorite early intervention websites: NECTAC, NICHCY, and the IDEA Partnership.This is a great website that is geared towards typical child development: Baby Center. And then there are those websites geared towards specific disabilities: NDSS, Autism Speaks, and dozens of others. There's also Pinterest, and Facebook Fanpages, and tons of wonderful blogs, that focus on a specific diagnosis or therapeutic approach.

One thing that can be helpful is to write a webpage or blog posting that deals with a specific issue and link to these other websites to assist families to learn how to research where they can find information when they are advocating on behalf of their child.

An Example, Please?
My son has an orthopedic impairment called Arthrogryposis.  Our community has a website, online forum, and a Facebook group. Recently we've been talking about a new report that links multiple exposures to anesthesia before age 3 to ADHD and learning disabilities. We've had discussions in the past regarding concerns about learning disabilities and inattentaton. Families shared that despite concerns raised by the child's general education teacher about how this was negatively impacting on the child's education, the IEPs for these students contained no goals or supports to address the concern. Families said that the schools informed them that since the students IEP was addressing an orthopedic impairment the focus was on their child's physical impairments and was not intended to address academic issues.  I did some quick research, got a hand finding the correct citations from a friend, and wrote a blog post that showed families where they could find letters from OSEP like this one explaining that IEP Teams should use the child's unique needs to decide what services to provide, not the disability label.  I also found citations that families could use to ask for additional evaluations.

But isn't this stuff already out there?
Yes, but that doesn't mean that people know where to find it or how to put the information to use.  Repurposing, reusing, rewriting and resharing can help families to find information and see how it might be put to use in the real world. 

Finding Information

There are many websites out there catering to the field of early intervention. Yet, anyone who provides training and support to families of young children knows that they continue to say that they are not finding the information that they want or need. What is the disconnect then?

Is it website design?

Many of the websites designed for early intervention programs use words that are not familiar to families who are new to early intervention. In fact, even calling it early intervention can be confusing! Families either have a diagnosis (Down syndrome, Arthrogryposis, Prematurity, microcephaly...) or a concern about a delay (not walking yet, delayed speech, not sitting up...). At the beginning of their journey families often don't know the words or jargon that go with early intervention. It is therefore important to think about what words families use when searching online. What information new families might need or want. Organizations can use a small focus group of families new to early intervention to ask them how they searched, what they searched for and what they were hoping to find. Having this information can help to create a website that provides the information in a way that increases the likelihood that families can find what they need, when they need it.

Is it an issue of focus?
State early intervention programs not only share information with families, they share it with other state agencies, county programs, contracted providers and early childcare programs. Each of these audiences have different needs from the website and different levels of expertise with the terms used in early intervention. Again, when designing or redesigning a website it is important to think about how different users will interact with the site. The site can be organized to have different doors or portals for different types of users. Even when thinking only about families we can think about the difference between families with a diagnosis and those with concerns about delays. Families of potentially eligible children have different questions then families of children who have been determined eligible. And families who have moved into leadership positions--joining family advisory councils, parent to parent programs and state Interagency Coordinating Councils (ICCs)--have different informational needs. Thinking through these different groups and their informational needs can help to insure your website is reaching your intended audience.

We're in love...

On Saturday, I posted about Pinterest. Today I am going to show you how I've been using Pinterest for my early intervention work. I began by just looking at all of the different boards out there, and as I mentioned, like Alice you can find yourself in a any number of crazy places!  So let's backtrack and talk about how I found some of my pins.  

Once I realized that I wanted to collect pins that reflected images around early intervention and assistive technology I first searched the kids section. There I found many other images from OTs, PTs, and SLPs and teachers. Then I went back to some of my tried and true websites and started pinning those images as well.  And then I thought, wait a second, I am repinning from others, why not invite those folks to pin to my board?  And you should see how it has exploded, I've added a dozen followers, too!   

Here's another shot of my EI Board, which you can follow here: http://pinterest.com/caseywaid/ei-ideas/

Are you using Pinterest?  If so, I'd like to follow you and read about what you are doing with your boards.

Whew...we're back!

Last month we talked about using Delicious for keeping track of our bookmarks. In the weeks since, we've found that many of our friends are more excited by Pinterest. Pinterest is an app (or application) that can be used as an add-on to Facebook or separately. To use Pinterest, one must be invited by another user. It seems to take some folks a little time to get the hang of how it works, this post will explain how we are using it. Once you've gotten over those hurdles the fun begins!  

Pinning as a way to Bookmark

Pinterest really comes out of the design world. Users have boards, think inspiration boards or bulletin boards. Onto which they "pin" images. You can then follow other users, their individual pins or just repin their finds to your own boards. When you first join you start with some generic boards, onto which you can pin your first finds. You can also create your own boards, with their own names. The fun is watching what is hot and popular (more on that later).  

As someone who doesn't self-identify as particularly crafty or arty I was a reluctant pinterest user. But I can safely say that I have both gotten the hang of it and I'm having fun! My neighbors are both crafty and involved in architecture and design so their boards have lots of design ideas, they separate them out by color or period. Meanwhile, not suprisingly, I am using some of my boards to collect ideas around early intervention and assistive technology, as you may be able to see here: http://pinterest.com/caseywaid/ei-ideas/

Popular Pins

One can find, that like Alice you drop into a rabbit hole when hanging out on Pinterest, so beware! You can view all pins, or search by categories, you can get lost, nah sucked into viewing loads of boards and pins! Then you may even find yourself down at the IKEA searching for spice racks that will make the most marvelous little bookshelves...found on this great blog:  theplanetpink.com . Unfortunately, our local IKEA is out of stock on this lovely item...they pegged me immediately as a Pinterest user, and said that though the folks over at http://www.ikeahackers.net/ had been at this for much longer it wasn't until Pinterest that they really saw DIYers who intended to hack their wares for other purposes.  

Hacking Pinterest

And my use of Pinterest to track early intervention strategies and assistve technology would probably fit under the heading of Pinterest hack. It can be hard to predict which social media site or app will be popular. I will probably use both Delicious and Pinterest for now. Let me know which ones you are using and how you are using them!

Community of Practice

Professional Development
Another way to inform and support is to create a Community of Practice (COP). As long as the internet has been around, there have been COPs. Sometimes these were accomplished using listserves. A local or national group would create a listserve and invite people they know to join.  In the last few years COPs have migrated to sites like Ning! The T A and D Network, a network of programs funded by OSEP has had COPs for some time and is now using a Ning site as well (You can see more on OSEP here or here). To operate a COP like the one used by TADNET, requires paying the fees required by Ning! and hoping that folks can find your COP, or you can simply join TADNET.

Web 2.0 Can Help Provide Families with Basic Information

Families Need Basic Information
When families first discover that their child has a diagnosed disability or they suspect that s/he has a delay, they need basic information about how early intervention works.  Let's think about how Web 2.0 can help families think about:

Can Web 2.0 Support Families?

There are a number of factors to consider when deciding whether or not to use social media to interact with potential website visitors.  In order to make that decision it is important to look at the current social media landscape, your company’s focus and your website.

What is Web 2.0?Web 2.0 means that users are no longer limited by what they can find and download (Web 1.0).  Now users can upload and create their own internet content without needing extensive expertise in programming code.  Users can also refashion what they have found elsewhere and link it to their own work and that of others[i].    It is important to recognize that information posted to the web will be repurposed and repackaged by users.  It is also important to stay connected to a site’s users, to identify user’s informational needs and how they are repackaging information found your site.  One way of doing this is to use other social media sites to both drive users to your site and to interact with them.  

Social Media Can Support Families Enrolled in Early Intervention

Welcome!
If you have heard of social media, but haven't had the time to figure out how to use it to reach families of young children with disabilities, this is the blog for you! If you have a Facebook fanpage but you haven't figured out how to make the most of it, this is the place for you! The internet is exploding with new ways to find, share and inform families of young children with disabilities.  Many families of children with disabilities are comfortable with these platforms, but they continue to report that they are not finding the facts or support that they need from official channels. These new platforms can help you to build your brand, support your existing website and keep families and professionals informed.


We'll discuss how web 2.0 is a game-changer, what it means for families and providers, and more importantly, how to use different social media platforms to reach families and share information. We will discuss why it is important to create a social media plan, how Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and other social media platforms work and how to use them effectively. We'll also talk about how to inform and engage families and professionals without violating their privacy rights or spending 24/7 at your computer.