Early Intervention
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Early intervention is a program to identify & evaluate as early as possible those infants and toddlers (0-3years) whose healthy development are compromised and provide for appropriate intervention to improve child and family development.
Who is eligible for Early Intervention?
- If the child is not reaching age-appropriate milestones in one or more areas of development.
- Is diagnosed with a physical, emotional or cognitive condition that may result in a development delay.
- Is at risk for development delay due to various biological and/or environmental factors
Why intervene Early?
There are three primary reasons for intervening early with an exceptional child.
- To enhance the child’s development.
- To provide support and assistance to the family
- To maximize the child’s and family’s benefit to society.
Principles of Early Intervention
The primary goal of Early Intervention is to support families in promoting the child’s optimal development & to facilitate the child’s participation in family & community activities.
The focus of Early Intervention is to encourage the active participation of families in the therapeutic process by imbedding intervention strategies into family routines. It is the parents who provide the real early intervention by creatively adopting their child care methods to facilitate the development of the child, while balancing the needs of the rest of the facility.
Early intervention requires a collaborative relationship between families and providers with equal participation by all those involved in the process. An ongoing parent professional dialogue is needed to develop, implement, monitor and modify therapeutic activities.
Intervention must be linked to specific goals that are family-centered, functional & measurable. Intervention strategies should focus on facilitating social interaction, exploration & autonomy.
Family centered:
- Support parents in meeting their responsibilities to nurture
- enhance the children’s development.
- Intervention should be integrated into a comprehensive plan that encourages trandisciplinary activities & avoids unnecessary duplication of services. The plan should be built around family routines, with written home-activity programs to encourage family participation in therapeutic activities on daily basis.
- Intervention should be monitored periodically, to assure that the strategies implemented are successful in achieving outcomes.
- Children and their families in the early intervention system deserve to have services of the highest quality possible. High standards will be set for the training & credentiality of administrative & intervention staff training, supervision & technology will be focused to achieve excellence.
Posted byNeeti at 9:23 PM
Labels: child disability, children, disability, early intervention, education, family support, parenting tips, Therapy