Families, most particularly parents, are vital participants in early intervention programming, both at an organizational level determining policies and scope and at the individual level where they are intimately involved in determining the EI services that their own child will receive. How might the EI system promote the active involvement of families at either the organizational and individual levels? Both types of involvement drive directly to the effectiveness of the system overall and for individual children.
- Helping parents understand the assessment process.
www.zerotothree.org/
ZERO TO THREE, the National Center For Infants, Toddlers and Families, offers Seven Tips for Surviving Your Child's Developmental Assessment.
- Explaining rights and safeguards to families.
www.nectac.org/~pdfs/pubs/assuring.pdf
Assuring the Family's Role on the Early Intervention Team: Explaining Rights and Safeguards provides a thorough discussions of what rights and safeguards we're talking about and includes clear, easy-to-read materials that can be shared with parents.
- Involving Latino families.
www.fpg.unc.edu/products/product_detail.cfm?apubsid=513
Addressing the Needs of Latino Children: A National Survey of State Administrators of Early Childhood Programs (Executive Summary) examines the linguistically and culturally relevant practices that state administrators reported were recommended or being used by early education and intervention programs that enrolled Latino children and families.
- Working with culturally & linguistically diverse families.
http://ceep.crc.uiuc.edu/eecearchive/digests/2001/bruns01.html
- Walking the walk: A guide to diversity resources for trainers.
http://www.fpg.unc.edu/~walkingthewalk/pdfs/WTW_guide.pdf
This annotated listing of high quality resources includes videotapes, books, curricula, and other materials that can be used to assist in growing a more diverse and better prepared workforce to serve infants, toddlers, children and families who are culturally and linguistically diverse.
- Getting fathers involved.
http://ecrp.uiuc.edu/v5n2/green.html
- National Parent Leadership Development Project for ICCs.
www.iccparent.org/
Being a parent representative on an ICC can be a confusing but exhilarating experience. The leadership support project at the link above is designed to support parents of children with disabilities serving on their state ICC, offer leadership institutes, a network of fellow parents, and the opportunity to orient, learn, grow, and succeed in the role.
- Influencing the interaction between parent and child.
www.clas.uiuc.edu/techreport/tech13.html