Family Engagement

This guide includes information on the Illinois Early Intervention (EI) Program, why EI services are important, how to find out whether your child is eligible for the EI program, starting and leaving EI services, your legal rights, and questions frequently asked by families.

Effective early intervention doesn’t stop when the provider leaves the family’s home. Targeting 80 skills in 6 key developmental domains for children birth to three, this reader-friendly guide gives professionals dozens of ready-to-use ideas for helping families and caregivers embed learning opportunities in their everyday routines.

Offers recommended practices for family-centered, evidence-based intervention and team collaboration to ensure the best possible outcomes for infants and young children involved in early intervention programs.

This book demonstrates how to improve parent-teacher communication, deal with family issues and special complications, and how to work with the modern family.

This hands-on guide shows professionals how to conduct skillful coaching in any setting—home, school, or community.

With a focus on how families and professionals can collaborate effectively so that infants and toddlers learn, grow, and thrive, this book reflects research and best-practices in the field of early intervention. The book includes a chapter on assessment and planning outlining how parents and professionals can work together throughout the process.

This is part 1 of a 2-part webinar series is intended for early intervention providers partnering with families to support the development of infants and toddlers with disabilities.

This video features Robin, a speech-language pathologist, coaching a mother during an early intervention visit.

In this video, produced for families who are new to early intervention, Dani and Marcos describe many of the key features of early intervention and how they and their daughter benefit from them.

This the first of a three part series of short videos featuring three current early intervention service providers sharing their insights into providing supports and services using a routines-based approach. Part 1 features an experienced interventionist sharing her personal journey from a clinical approach to one focusing on family routines and activities as the context for effective early intervention.

This the first of a three part series of short videos featuring three current early intervention service providers sharing their insights into providing supports and services using a routines-based approach. Part 2 features three early interventionists discussing and demonstrating what intervention looks like when it is provided by collaborating with families during their natural routines and activities.

This the first of a three part series of short videos featuring three current early intervention service providers sharing their insights into providing supports and services using a routines-based approach. Part 3 features three early interventionists sharing their insights about how they evolved their practices towards a more effective, routines-based intervention approach.

A developmental vision specialist describes how she used video recordings of her early intervention home visits as a foundation for self-reflection and refinement of her practice.

The videos on this page can be used to promote recommended early intervention practices.

This video includes examples of early intervention home-visiting approaches that reflect a variety of routine-based, family-centered strategies and activities used by two interventionists for children with different learning needs.

VEIPD provides coordination and oversight of Virginia’s Comprehensive System of Personnel Development (CSPD) for early interventionists who provide supports and services for infants and toddlers with developmental delays and disabilities and their families under Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA). See Early Intervention Topics & Trends and Talks on Tuesdays Webinars.

The author presents an overview of the development of coaching in early intervention and 3 recommendations to the field to increase the use of family coaching.

Family-centered practice has long been recognized as the preferred method of delivery for EI services for infants and toddlers who have or are at risk of having disabilities.The purpose of this article is to provide a framework that offers a way for EI service providers to better meet the needs of the culturally diverse children and families they serve.

This article offers ideas to strengthen the understanding of the importance of family-centered practices during the IFSP or IEP planning process, presents strategies that professionals can use to empower families, and shares ideas on how to convey a personalized view of the child to team members.

Families and caregivers are their children’s first teachers, and even if early interventionists visited children every day, families and other caregivers still have more opportunities to impact their children’s development. The most efficient way to do this is to support the family’s ability to maximize natural learning opportunities and embed intervention into their own activities and routines.

This article provides guidance and recommendations for practitioners and families on IFSPs based on five components of quality.

This article describes a study that was conducted to determine if natural learning environment interventions strengthened family capacity to provide their young children with developmental delays everyday natural learning opportunities.

This article uses vignettes to demonstrate how the teachers (a) build positive relationships with families, (b) support participation, and (c) create an empowering context and connects these best practices with the DEC Recommended Practices.

Florida State University supports this ongoing research endeavor that focuses on developing and validating an early intervention approach that incorporates the Part C of IDEA mandates and the recommended evidence-based practices for supports and services for young children with special needs and their familie

This paper provided an extensive review of the research on family engagement, clearly supporting the importance of strong partnerships between families and early childhood education programs.