What is Early Intervention? “Early intervention is a program formed to help infants and toddlers with developmental delays and disabilities (Overview of Early Intervention).” How does early intervention help children? Early intervention is a program designed to help improve children’s developmental delays and disabilities such as not being able to roll over or walk or talk by the time frame that it is expected. Early intervention also helps with children that have physical disabilities such as cleft lip and palate that will impair their speech or cerebral palsy that affects many things like speech and the ability to walk. “Children with more severe disabilities tend to have a constant rate of improvement regardless when they start (Malone, D. M., McKinsey, P. D., Thyer, B. A., & Straka, E. (2000).” The more the child is worked with the more the child will show improvement. No early intervention is not going to fix the whole thing, but early intervention will help improve the delay and/or disability. Early intervention is only available to the age of three years old. Does this mean that once children are over the age of three they are unable to get the help they need? No, this just means that you have to find other available resources for your child, there may be some provided at the child’s school or if your child did get early intervention the worker could provide you with some resources that not everyone knows about or you could ask your child’s doctor, there’s always help out there it’s just the matter of finding it. How does this all affect the child’s family?
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Families that have children with disabilities may have to do things differently or may be unable to do things because of the delay or disability but this is what early intervention is for. The parent should always be involved in everything that the early intervention worker is working on with the child so that when the worker is not there the parent can continue to work with the child to make improvements. “Researchers have provided evidence for the importance of a family-focused approach to intervention (Davis, K., & Gavidia-Payne, S. (2009).” “Dunst and colleagues (2007) conducted a meta-analysis of 47 studies and found that relational and participatory help-giving practices were associated with positive parent, family, and child outcome (Davis, K., & Gavidia-Payne, S. (2009).” With these facts it is clearly shown that the more the parents are involved the better it is for the family and child and the more improvements that are able to be made. In some situations the parents may not want to be involved some parents think that this is just going to be a solution to the problem, but without the reinforcement from the parents there won’t be much improvement shown. The early intervention worker should always fully explain everything to the parents like what they are writing about the child or what they are seeing is happening, if a parent does not understand something then it won’t be helpful, the more that everyone is one the same page the better. Can anyone get their child tested to receive early intervention? Yes, if you believe that your child has a developmental delay or disability you could contact your local early intervention program and have your child tested. Is it possible that someone’s child may not qualify, but still might be showing signs? Yes, there is a possibility that
Families that have children with disabilities may have to do things differently or may be unable to do things because of the delay or disability but this is what early intervention is for. The parent should always be involved in everything that the early intervention worker is working on with the child so that when the worker is not there the parent can continue to work with the child to make improvements. “Researchers have provided evidence for the importance of a family-focused approach to intervention (Davis, K., & Gavidia-Payne, S. (2009).” “Dunst and colleagues (2007) conducted a meta-analysis of 47 studies and found that relational and participatory help-giving practices were associated with positive parent, family, and child outcome (Davis, K., & Gavidia-Payne, S. (2009).” With these facts it is clearly shown that the more the parents are involved the better it is for the family and child and the more improvements that are able to be made. In some situations the parents may not want to be involved some parents think that this is just going to be a solution to the problem, but without the reinforcement from the parents there won’t be much improvement shown. The early intervention worker should always fully explain everything to the parents like what they are writing about the child or what they are seeing is happening, if a parent does not understand something then it won’t be helpful, the more that everyone is one the same page the better. Can anyone get their child tested to receive early intervention? Yes, if you believe that your child has a developmental delay or disability you could contact your local early intervention program and have your child tested. Is it possible that someone’s child may not qualify, but still might be showing signs? Yes, there is a possibility that