Tuesday Tidbit: Recommended Practice in Working with Families

Tuesday Tidbit: From the Division for Early Childhood (DEC) Recommended Practices Document with Embedded Examples (2016):

Strand: FAMILY

Photo credits: Division for Early Childhood, 2015

"F5: Practitioners support family functioning, promote family confidence and competence, and strengthen family-child relationships by acting in ways that recognize and build on
family strengths and capacities.

Examples:

• A developmental specialist focuses on sharing information and providing support so that the family feels confident they can assist their child in-between visits.
• A family educator helps the family identify ways to share their parenting accomplishments and successes with other parents experiencing similar challenges.
• A physical therapist asks the family what types of activities they currently use to support their child’s efforts to walk and then provides the family with strategies they can use to increase the child’s participation in those activities.
• An early interventionist acknowledges a family’s strengths and expertise in addressing the child’s challenging behaviors and supports the family in using these skills to address the child’s
  sleeping difficulties."

(DEC, 2016, p. 18)

Download the full document here: http://www.dec-sped.org/dec-recommended-practices

Question to reflect on:
What are some ways in which you support family functioning, promote family confidence and competence, and strengthen family-child relationships?

We would love to hear additional examples from our EI SIG participants. Please share your ideas in the comments section below - it would be great to use this space to inspire each other's work.