Early childhood

intervention

Early childhood intervention (ECI) is a

support and educational system for very
young children (aged birth to six years)
who have been victims of, or who are at
high risk for child abuse and/or neglect as
well as children who have developmental
delays or disabilities. Some states and
regions have chosen to focus these
services on children with developmental
disabilities or delays, but Early Childhood
Intervention is not limited to children with
these disabilities.[1]

The mission of early childhood

intervention is to assure that families who
have at-risk children in this age range
receive resources and supports that assist
them in maximizing their child's physical,
cognitive, and social/emotional
development while respecting the diversity
of families and communities.[2]

Definition
Early intervention is a system of
coordinated services that promotes the
child's age-appropriate growth and
development and supports families during
the critical early years. In the United
States, some early intervention services to
eligible children and families are federally
mandated through the Individuals with
Disabilities Education Act. Other early
intervention services are available through
various national, regional, and state
programs such as Crisis Nurseries and
Healthy Start/Healthy Families America.
Starting with a partnership between
parents and professionals at this early
stage helps the child, family and
community as a whole.
Early intervention services delivered within
the context of the family can aid with the
below through the services of physical,
occupational, and speech therapy. Some
examples include:

Help prevent child abuse and neglect

Mitigate the effects of abuse and
neglect
Improve parenting skills
Strengthen families
Improve the child's developmental,
social, and educational gains;
Reduce the future costs of special
education, rehabilitation and health care
 needs;
Reduce feelings of isolation, stress and
frustration that families may experience;
Help alleviate and reduce behaviors by
using positive behavior strategies and
interventions; and
Help children with disabilities grow up to
become productive, independent
individuals.
Assistance with technological devices,
counseling, and family training.

The earlier children at high risk for abuse

or neglect, of children with or at risk of
disabilities receive assistance and the
sooner their families receive support
towards their child's development, the
farther they will go in life.[3][4]

History
Early childhood intervention came about
as a natural progression from special
education for children with disabilities
(Guralnick, 1997). Many early childhood
intervention support services began as
research units in universities (for example,
Syracuse University in the United States
and Macquarie University in Australia)
while others were developed out of
organizations helping older children.
In the 1990s, many states in the US put
into place a program where the child's
pediatrician can recommend a child for
early childhood intervention screening.
These services are usually provided free of
charge through the local school district or
county, depending on the state.

Individuals with Disabilities

Education Improvement Act
(IDEA) Part C

The Part C (originally Part H) program

mandates a statewide, comprehensive,
multidisciplinary service system to
address the needs of infants and toddlers
who are experiencing developmental
delays or a diagnosed physical or mental
condition with a high probability of an
associated developmental disability in one
or more of the following areas: cognitive
development, physical development,
language and speech development,
psychosocial development, and self-help
skills. In addition, states may opt to define
and serve at-risk children. The therapies
provided by IDEA can be found in the
home, child care, early head start, and
community settings such as the county.[4]
Commonly cited factors that may put an
infant or toddler at risk of developmental
delay include low birth weight, respiratory
distress as a newborn, lack of oxygen,
brain hemorrhage, infection, and prenatal
exposure to toxins through maternal
substance abuse.

Every state now implements Part C fully.

The original legislation provided a five-year
phase-in period for states to develop their
comprehensive system of service for the
affected population. Although IDEA does
not mandate states' participation in Part
H/C, powerful financial incentives from the
federal government have led every state to
participate. States were provided
extensions of the 5-year period as they
struggled with the logistic, interagency,
and financial demands of developing a
statewide system. To ensure a
coordinated approach to service delivery
and financing of services, federal
regulations of Part C require that states
develop interagency agreements that
define the financial responsibility of each
agency and impanel a state interagency
coordinating council to assist the lead
agency in implementing the statewide
system. Regulations also prohibit the
substitution of funds and reduction of
benefits once the plan is implemented in
each state (United States Department of
Education, 1993). As states and federal
territories (for example, Guam, Puerto
Rico, the Virgin Islands) began to plan for
implementation of P.L. 99-457 and later
IDEA, their first obligation was to
designate an agency that would provide
leadership in the planning and
administration of the state's
comprehensive system. In 1989, 22 states
or territories had the department of
education as lead agency, 11 others had
the department of health, another 9 had
the department of human services, and
the remaining states had combined
departments or departments of mental
health or developmental disabilities
(Trohanis, 1989). [5]
Meeting developmental
milestones
Every child is unique, growing and
developing at his or her own rate.
Differences between children of the same
age are usually nothing to worry about.
However, for one child in 10, the
differences can be related to a
developmental delay. The sooner these
delays are identified, the quicker children
may be able to catch up to their peers.

Identifying these delays early is also

important because the most critical time
for brain development is before the age of
three. The brain develops in an experience-
dependent process. If certain experiences
are not triggered, the pathways in the brain
relating to this experience will not be
activated. If these pathways are not
activated, they will be eliminated.[6]

Milestones birth to three

At age one month most children can:

Raise their heads slightly when lying on

their stomachs
Briefly watch objects
Pull away from a blanket on their face

At age three months most children can:

 Lift their heads and chest while lying on
their stomachs
Make cooing sounds
Follow a moving person with their eyes
Smile back at someone

At age six months most children can:

Sit with minimal support

Roll from their back to their stomach
Respond to their name by looking

At age 12 months most children can:

Pull themselves up to stand and take

steps with hands held
 Follow with their eyes in the direction
that you are pointing
Start a game of peek-a-boo, imitate
clapping hands, point to show you
something
Say two or three words on a regular
basis
Sit up when prompted

At age 18 months most children can:

Walk backwards
Walk down stairs holding an adult's
hand
Use words and gestures (like taking you
by the hand) to get needs met
 Perform simple pretend play like talking
on the phone, feeding a stuffed animal

At age 24 months most children can:

Kick a large ball

Describe an injury or illness to an adult
(bumped my head)
Show interest in other children by
offering them a toy or taking their hand

At age 32 months most children can:

Pretend to be an animal or favorite

character
Talk about the past/future
 Answer "what", "where", and "who"
questions easily
Imitate drawing a horizontal line after
being shown
Hold a crayon with 3 fingers[7]

However, if a child is premature it is not

correct to compare them to this list of
developments to be achieved by the age of
three. Their chronological age of a
premature child needs to be considered.
That is, if a child is 12 weeks old but was
born four weeks early, then the child's
chronological age is only eight weeks. This
is the age that needs to be considered
when comparing the child's developments
to others.[8]

Recent discovery has also suggested that

in some premature children the delays do
not appear until the age of three,
suggesting that all premature children
receive Early Intervention Therapy rather
than just those who appear to have
developmental delays.[9]

Early intervention services

The following is a list of what early
intervention can provide:
Assisting technology devices and
services – equipment and services that
are used to improve or maintain the
abilities of a child to participate in such
activities as playing, communication,
eating or moving
Audiology – identifying and providing
services for children with hearing loss
and prevention of hearing loss
Family training – services provided by
qualified personnel to assist the family
in understanding the special needs of
the child and in promoting the child’s
development
Medical services – only for diagnostic
or evaluation purposes
Mental health counseling for children,
parents, and families
Nursing services – assessment of
health status of the child for the
purpose of providing nursing care, and
provision of nursing care to prevent
health problems, restore and improve
functioning, and promote optimal health
and development. This may include
administering medications, treatments,
and other procedures prescribed by
licensed physician.
Nutrition services – services that help
address the nutritional needs of children
that include identifying feeding skills,
feeding problems, food habits, and food
preferences
Occupational therapy – services that
relate to self-help skills, adaptive
behavior and play, and sensory, motor,
and postural development
Parent training; parenting education
Physical therapy – services to prevent or
lessen movement difficulties and related
functional problems.
Psychological services – administering
and interpreting psychological tests and
information about a child’s behavior and
child and family conditions related to
learning, mental health and development
as well as planning services including
counseling, consultation, parent training,
and education programs.
Service coordination – someone who
works in partnership with the family by
providing assistance and services that
help the family to coordinate and obtain
their rights under the early intervention
program and services agreed upon in
the Individual Family Service Plan
Social work services – preparing an
assessment of the social and emotional
strengths and needs of a child and
family, and providing individual or group
services such as counseling or family
training
Special instruction – includes designing
learning environments and activities
that promote the child’s development,
providing families with information,
skills, and support to enhance the child’s
development.
Speech-language pathology – services
for children with delay in
communication skills or with motor
skills such as weakness of muscles
around the mouth or swallowing. The
 power of early intervention, lays in the
fact that the paediatric brain is most
‘plastic’ (meaning: flexible or capable of
change) during the first three years of
life. [10]
Therapeutic early childhood classrooms,
providing developmentally appropriate
learning environments, and staffed by
trained early interventionists
Vision services – identification of
children with visual disorders or delays
and providing services and training to
those children[3]

Providing early childhood

intervention
Robin McWilliam (2003, 2010[11])
developed a model that emphasizes five
components: Understanding the family
ecology through eco-maps; functional
needs assessment through a routines-
based interview; transdisciplinary service
delivery through the use of a primary
service provider; support-based home
visits through the parent consultation; and
collaborative consultation to child care
through individualized intervention within
routines.[12] "These services are to be
provided in the child's natural setting,
preferably at a local level, with a family-
oriented and multi-dimensional team
approach".
A very common form of early intervention
provided is a therapist coming into the
home and playing with the child with toys.
Large toys such as wagons and puzzles
can be used to aid the child in muscle
development while toys like bubbles can
be used to aid in sensory development.
With services like this the care provided is
in a neutral setting at a local level and the
family and therapist team are present.[13]
Experts in early intervention have, however,
discredited this form of early intervention
in favor of using the visit to build the
capability of the child's natural caregivers
(e.g., parents), so the child receives much
more "intervention" throughout the week
than would be received in a single visit,
directly from the professional. [14]

Early childhood intervention may be

provided within a centre-based program
(such as Early Head Start in the United
States), a home-based program (such as
Portage in Britain), or a mixed program
(such as Lifestart in Australia). Some
programs are funded entirely by the
government, while others are charitable or
fee-paying, or a combination.

An early childhood intervention team

generally consists of teachers with early
childhood education training, special
education specialists, speech and
language pathologists, physical therapists
(physiotherapists), occupational
therapists, and other support staff, such
as music therapists, teacher
aides/assistants, and counselors. A key
feature of early childhood intervention is
the transdisciplinary model, in which staff
members discuss and work on goals even
when they are outside their discipline: "In a
transdisciplinary team the roles are not
fixed. Decisions are made by professionals
collaborating at a primary level. The
boundaries between disciplines are
deliberately blurred to employ a 'targeted
eclectic flexibility'" (Pagliano, 1999).
Goals are chosen by the families through
the annual or biannual Individual Family
Service Plan (IFSP), which evolves from a
meeting where families and staff
members talk together about current
concerns, as well as celebrating
achievements. McWilliam's Routines-
Based Interview, in which caregivers talk
about the details of the child's and family's
day, is used in many parts of the world to
develop the family's chosen goals.

A significant application of the

transdisciplinary model, was developed by
Relief Nursery, Inc.[15] of Eugene, Oregon,
an early pioneer of the model. Founded in
1976 as a local child abuse prevention
effort, Relief Nursery became a pilot
project under the National Crisis Nurseries
Act of 1986 [16] Working with early
childhood experts Christine Chaille and
Lory Britain[17] and representatives from
the local community, the approach was
refined into a new comprehensive family
services model, so successful that it was
replicated at more than 30 sites in the
State of Oregon.[18] The model attracted
national and international interest,
recognized in 2002 by the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services, Office on
Child Abuse and Neglect (OCAN), as an
"innovative program with noteworthy
aspects",[19] and becoming part of a
project sponsored by Holt International[20]
in 2008, to introduce the model into the
Ukraine as an alternative to their existing --
and failing -- orphanage model.[21]

Criticism
Some criticism of early childhood
intervention asserts that growing up is
different for each individual, depending on
genetic endowments and environmental
circumstances. However one thing is
common to everyone: the process, in order
to take full advantage of the species'
potential, must be a natural ripening,
uninterfered with by clumsy intruders.
Some critics of early childhood
intervention say that no one should push
healthy children to learn any skill or
academic discipline before they choose to
do so of their own accord.[22]

The family-centered ethos in early

intervention programs, however, supports
families' desires for their children to be
engaged, independent, and social in their
everyday routines.[23] The choice is
therefore not the child's but the parents',
who are urged to follow the child's lead.
In the US state of Georgia, the program
"Babies Can't Wait" was put in place to
help parents find early intervention
therapy. The program works the same as
many government-mandated early
intervention programs in that it first
evaluates the child for free, and then
deems what services the child needs to
receive.

However, this particular program has

received two major criticisms, for its
timeline and for the collaborative model it
provides. The program has 45 days to
evaluate the child, then has another 45
days to develop a plan and provide
services for the child. Due to limited
providers working with "Babies Can't Wait",
the deadline is sometimes not met and the
services are not provided.

"Babies Can't Wait" works on a

collaborative model, with medical
professionals communicating with each
other about the services each child needs.
A physical therapist would consult with a
speech therapist, and then the physical
therapist would provide the child with
speech therapy as part of the child's
physical therapy session, instead of the
child having an additional therapy session
with the speech therapist.[24]
See also
Special Assistance Program (Australian
education)

References
1. Texas Health and Human Services; Early
Childhood Intervention Services: "What is
ECI?" [1] Retrieved June 10, 2017.
2. Early Intervention
3. Early Intervention at brighttots.com
4. The American Physical Therapy
Association. "The Role of Physical Therapy
with Infants, Toddlers, and their Families in
Early Intervention".
5. Saunders, Edward J.; Health and Social
Work, Vol. 20, 1995
https://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qs
t?docId=5000265362
6. Siegel, Daniel (1999). The Developing
Mind: Toward a Neurobiology of
Interpersonal Experience. New York:
Guilford Press.
7. Bright Beginnings Developmental
Therapy
8. "Preemie Milestones" . Healthy Children.
9. Wagner, Holly. "Predicting the Future of
Premature Babies" . On Campus Research
(The Ohio State University).
10. https://www.speechclinic.com.au/early-
intervention-speech-pathology/
11. McWilliam, R. A. (2010). Routines-based
early intervention. Baltimore: Brookes
Publishing Co.
12. McWilliam, R. A. (2003). "The primary-
service-provider model for home- and
community-based services". Psicologia. 17:
115–135.
13. "Children and Toys" . The Creativity
Institute.
14. http://
ectacenter.org/~pdfs/topics/families/Final
missionandprinciples3_11_08.pdf:
15. Relief Nursery, Inc.
16. Public Law 99-401; 100 Stat. 903
17. Chaille, C, and Britain, L.; The Young
Child as Scientist; Pearson; New York, New
York: 2002
18. Oregon Association of Relief Nurseries
19. U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services; Emerging Practices in the
Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect;
Administration for Children and Families,
Administration on Children, Youth and
Families, Children's Bureau, Office on Child
Abuse and Neglect; Caliber Associates;
Washington, D.C.: 2002.
20. Holt International
21. Bertha Holt Awards Presented at
Reception
22. Greenberg, D. A. (1992). Stop Pushing
Children, Education in America: A View from
Sudbury Valley. 11-13. Sudbury Valley
School Press.
23. McWilliam, R. A. (2016). The routines-
based model for supporting speech and
language. Logopedia, Foniatría y Audiología,
36, 178-184.
24. Frazer, Anesha. "Pros and Cons: The
Breakdown of Early Intervention Services
Through Babies Can't Wait" . Atlanta
Speech Therapy.

External links
"Inclusive Early Childhood Education" .
European Agency for Development in
Special Needs Education. Retrieved
2016-05-10..
Overview of Early Intervention Early
Intervention Information from NICHCY
Early Childhood Intervention Association
of Australia . Retrieved 2006-06-15.
Lifestart Early Childhood Intervention,
Australia . Retrieved 2006-06-15.
Early Intervention Program for NYC .
Retrieved 2008-06-16
Early intervention support and inclusion
for children with disability . Retrieved
2016-05-10
 Bright Tots
New Jersey Early Intervention System
Early Intervention Foundation UK
[1][2][3][4]

[5]

1. American Physical Therapy Association.

(n.d.). The Role of Physical Therapy with
Infants, Toddlers, and their Families in Early
Intervention. Retrieved July 11, 2016, from
https://pediatricapta.org/special-interest-
groups/early-intervention/pdfs/Role of PT
in EI.pdf
2. "Predicting the Future of Premature
Babies, Testing Previews Future Learning
Problems." Vol.29, No. 14 -- Research --
OnCampus, OSU's Newspaper for Faculty
and Staff. Retrieved July 24, 2016.
http://oncampus.osu.edu/v29n14/research
.html .
3. Preemie Milestones. (n.d.). Retrieved July
11, 2016, from
https://www.healthychildren.org/English/ag
es-stages/baby/preemie/Pages/Preemie-
Milestones.aspx
4. Siegel, Daniel J. The Developing Mind:
Toward a Neurobiology of Interpersonal
Experience. New York: Guilford Press, 1999.
5. "The Creativity Institute – Creative Play
Toys." The Creativity Institute – Creative
Play Toys. Retrieved July 18, 2016.
http://www.creativityinstitute.com/earlychil
dhooddevelopment-childrenandtoys.aspx .

Retrieved from
"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
title=Early_childhood_intervention&oldid=86238562
1"

Last edited 2 months ago by an ano…

Content is available under CC BY-SA 3.0 unless

otherwise noted.