Increasing Family Collaboration and Engagement in Early Childhood Special Education Using a Family-Centered Approach

Abstract

The Division of Early Childhood (DEC) has recognized family-centered practice as the recommended model of service delivery for early intervention. A key component of family-centered practice involves collaboration with families. It is critical for families and early childhood special education teachers to work together to increase student outcomes, while keeping the needs of the family in mind (Hile, Santos, and Hughes, 2016). Themes discovered in the literature include: building relationships with families (Odom & Wolery, 2003), family engagement opportunities (Kelty & Wakabayashi, 2020), and providing families with resources (Summers et al., 2007). To increase family collaboration and engagement for the 2021-2022 school year, this project consisted of a series of handouts intended for families to practice research-based strategies at home, in their natural environment. Parent handouts included research-based strategies to target skills in the five different developmental domains of early childhood: fine and gross motor development, adaptive development, language development, social-emotional development and cognitive development

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