Early Intervention Home-Visiting Principles in Practice: A Reflective Approach

The home is the most frequently used location for providing early intervention supports and services. However, practices to address child development outcomes have shifted from direct, hands-on "treatment" to supporting families through collaboration and consultation so that they can promote their child's development by using identified intervention strategies effectively and confidently during their everyday activities. Routine activities, those everyday family experiences, provide rich opportunities for promoting child development. Interventionists support families' use of these routine activities as learning opportunities by embedding intervention strategies, individualized to the unique learning characteristics of the child into the routine activities. Practices regarding child-focused interventions include considering the setting (i.e., routine activity) in intervention design, ensuring strategies can be used across settings where children learn, and promoting child engagement with other people and materials. A recommended practice for interdisciplinary models is "team members focus on between-session time (i.e., build in activities that can be carried out across time and contexts)." Although home visiting consultation practices are endorsed, early interventionists might have difficulty implementing these practices, especially when they have been trained to be more hands-on and directed toward the child rather than the caregiver and child. This article guides early interventionists' reflections on their own home visiting practices with respect to recommended practices. The practices discussed are specific to the times during home visits when intervention is focused on child learning outcomes. There most likely will be other times when the home visit focus is on other family outcomes, where these practices might be modified to reflect the different focus. (Contains 1 table.)