Purpose

Despite the mandate to provide services in natural environments, service providers face many challenges with how best to address developmental outcomes of infants and toddlers in the context of their daily routines and activities. The philosophy of natural environments intervention includes the caregiver with the child undertaking the activities, events, and chores of daily life. Although this approach sounds logically appealing, support for its efficacy is limited. There is also a need for more information about how specific features of the intervention are functionally related to positive child outcomes and the applicability of this intervention model to children and families with diverse characteristics. The major aim of this project is to develop and validate a family guided routines based intervention model that meets the legislative mandates and the recommended practices of the field with empirical data to support the model components.

Goals

The goals of the project are to:

• Evaluate the effectiveness of a family-guided routines based intervention model in natural environments with young children with disabilities and their families.
  
  
• Develop evidence-based early intervention procedures for working with family members and caregivers to promote developmental outcomes for young children at risk or with identified disabilities in their home and community settings.
  
  
• Disseminate information gathered from the project to service providers, state level policy makers, and researchers to share data on the efficacy of this model and to build capacity of individuals and programs to provide family-guided services in natural environments.