Purpose
The purpose of this module is to provide information and content related to Family-Centered Practice and Culture. Aiming to expand the knowledge base and capacity of pre-professionals, educators, and service providers, this module embeds the following topics:
- Ethical, Policy, and Historical Foundations of Trusting Family-Professional Partnerships
- Family Systems Theory: Application to Families of Children with Disabilities
- Conceptualization, Measurement, and Application of Family Quality of Life
- Group Action Planning: Enhancing Family and Individual Quality of Life Across the Life Span
- Trusting Family-Professional Partnerships in Special and General Education: Sunshine Model on Trusting Family-Professional Partnerships
Objectives
As a result of active participation and successful engagement with this module, students will be able to:
- Explain the core concepts of disability policy most related to family support as they relate to and align with the DEC Code of Ethics and DEC Recommended Practices.
- Compare and contrast different family-professional partnership models and the potential positive outcomes for families and children for each model.
- Apply the Family Systems Framework in order to gather information about families, their values, and desired outcomes to inform decisions.
- Summarize research findings on family quality of life and the impact of trusting family-professional partnerships to inform practice.
- Implement the process of group action planning (GAP) as a tool to increase family quality of life outcomes.
- Apply the Sunshine Model on Trusting Family-Professional Partnerships to develop a plan for an IEP meeting for a family with diversified needs who has a toddler with a severe disability.
- Identify evidence-based practices, tools, scales, and self-assessments to foster trusting family-professional partnerships with families with infants and young children with disabilities.
- Recognize how systemic racism and cultural barriers can impact the development of trusting partnerships with families and identify at least one strategy to help navigate challenging partnership dynamics with families who have experienced systemic racism.
PD Guides
PowerPoints:
Ethical, Policy, and Historical Foundations of Trusting Family-Professional Partnerships
Conceptualization, Measurement, and Application of Family Quality of Life
Group Action Planning: Enhancing Family and Individual Quality of Life Across the Life Span
Trusting Family-Professional Partnerships in Special and General Education
Handouts:
Case Study
Case Study: Family-Centered Practice and Culture
The case study follows a family-centered IEP process for 3-year-old Malik, a child with global developmental delays, highlighting how educators and service providers build equity, respect, effective communication, advocacy, and long-term commitment with Malik’s Haitian immigrant family to ensure meaningful participation and culturally responsive support.
Multimedia Illustrations
The video library is a compilation of almost 500 videos that may be used in early childhood intervention pre-service courses or in-service training. Each video contains the following relevant information:
- Title with a description
- Link to video
- Suggested citation
- Length of the video
- EI/ECSE standard
- DEC Recommended Practice
Resources
Resources to supplement the syllabus:
- CEC Initial Practice-Based Professional Preparation Standards for EI/ECSE (2020)
Link to the standards and supporting resources. - Center for Parent Information and Resources
Link to family-friendly materials and resources. - CONNECT Modules (Module 3)
A module about effective communication practices to support collaboration. - CONNECT Modules (Module 4)
A module to learn about building family-professional partnership practices. - Early Childhood Recommended Practices Modules (Module 4)
A module to learn about effective family-professional partnership practices. - ECPC Cross-Disciplinary Competencies
Core cross-disciplinary competence areas for use by ECI professionals.