This page contains the following articles:
Article 1: Get to Know the DEC Recommended Practices
This article is the first in a series to provide an overview of the Division for Early Childhood Recommended Practices (DEC RPs) including what they are, why they are important, and where you can find more information on them. To kickoff, we spotlight Family practices, including examples of what they look like, don’t look like, and additional activities you may explore independently, with families, peers, your supervisor and/or other team members as you develop your skills around these practices. Be sure to follow us on Facebook if you want to receive additional resources, encouragement, and opportunities to engage with others on the DEC RPs throughout the year!
The Division for Early Childhood (DEC) of the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) is a well-established professional organization for many early interventionists and early childhood special educators. For many years, DEC has produced Recommended Practices (RPs) to guide the work of administrators, practitioners and service coordinators serving young children with, or at risk for, delays and disabilities and their families. The DEC RPs are also available in Spanish: Prácticas recomendadas de la DEC.
The RPs are intended to bridge the gap between research and practice by highlighting practices that have been shown to result in better outcomes for children and their families. Updated in 2014, the DEC RPs utilize the best available empirical evidence as well as wisdom and experience from the field. The current DEC RPs provide guidance around the following topic areas: Leadership, Assessment, Environment, Family, Instruction, Interaction, Teaming and Collaboration and Transition.
Engaging families in early intervention services is critical for success. Family engagement is the focus of an interventionist’s everyday work as well as a system focus through our State Systemic Improvement Plan. For these reasons, we will first highlight the RPs that focus on family practices. The DEC RPs define Family practices as ongoing activities that:
- promote the active participation of families in decision-making related to their child (e.g., assessment, planning, intervention);
- lead to the development of a service plan (e.g., a set of goals for the family and child and the services and supports to achieve those goals); and
- support families in achieving the goals they hold for their child and the other family members.
The practices are further organized around three themes: family-centered practices (those that guide how we interact with families), family capacity-building practices (those that strengthen family knowledge and skills), and family and professional collaboration practices (those that build and sustain relationships).
This newsletter focuses on the family-centered practices. The intent is to bring awareness to the practices and offer resources and support for implementation
The first four practices in the Family Practice topic area illustrate practices connected to the family-centered theme:
F1. Practitioners build trusting and respectful partnerships with the family through interactions that are sensitive and responsive to cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic diversity.
F2. Practitioners provide the family with up-to-date, comprehensive and unbiased information in a way that the family can understand and use to make informed choices and decisions.
F3. Practitioners are responsive to the family’s concerns, priorities, and changing life circumstances.
F4. Practitioners and the family work together to create outcomes or goals, develop individualized plans, and implement practices that address the family’s priorities and concerns and the child’s strengths and needs.
The table below provides an example of what the first Family-Centered Practice looks like and doesn’t look like, which is found along with additional examples of what the practices look like at DEC RPs with Examples
|
DEC RP
|
Looks Like
|
Doesn’t Look Like
|
|
F1. Practitioners build trusting and respectful partnerships with the family through interactions that are sensitive and responsive to cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic diversity.
|
A service coordinator shares information about the family’s rights in the format and language with which the family is most comfortable.
An early interventionist asks open-ended questions and makes every effort to learn about family routines and rituals so they can honor and respect them.
|
A service coordinator doesn’t take time to raise awareness of how implicit biases can influence relationships with families.
An early interventionist assumes the family’s routines are the same as hers and suggests strategies without asking what the family spends time doing.
|
The DEC website has numerous resources connected to the RPs, including more examples of what they look like in practice. Because of the RPs importance and ability to positively impact outcomes, the Early Intervention Training Program (EITP) has committed to bringing awareness, education, and resources on the RPs to the field through: EITP professional development offerings and system activities (e.g. webinars, State Systemic Improvement Plan (SSIP) activities, etc.), additional newsletter articles, and EITP Facebook posts.
You can also visit the ECTA Center's Practice Improvement Tools: Using the DEC Recommended Practice, especially the Family topic and tools.
Additionally, you can choose to explore one, several or all of the following activities to extend your learning as an individual, with families you serve, with fellow team members, or with staff.
Article 2: Family Capacity-Building Practices
In our EITP Fall 2019 Newsletter, we provided an overview of the Division for Early Childhood Recommended Practices (DEC RPs). Because engaging families in early intervention (EI) services is critical for success, we are continuing our focus on the Family practices within the DEC RPs by spotlighting practices that support family capacity-building.
Family capacity-building practices involve the participatory opportunities and experiences we give to families that strengthen their existing knowledge and skills and promote the development of new abilities that enhance parenting self-efficacy beliefs and practices.
What are the Practices that support Family Capacity-Building?
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.
F6. Practitioners engage the family in opportunities that support and strengthen parenting knowledge and skills and parenting competence and confidence in ways that are flexible, individualized, and tailored to the family’s preferences.
Download a handout to fill in your examples of what the family capacity-building practices look like and don’t look like
Download a completed handout of what the family capacity-building practices look like and don’t look like.
Tip: After review the above examples or additional examples of DEC RPs, reflect on your own practices. Individually or collaboratively with a family or team member, consider what you do well and what could be improved.
Explore the following activities to extend your learning!
Where can I learn more about the DEC RPs?
Be sure to follow us on Facebook if you want to receive additional resources, encouragement, and opportunities to engage with others on the DEC RPs throughout the year! You can also visit the DEC RPs website which has numerous resources connected to the RPs, including examples of what they look like in practice. Additional resources can also be found by visiting the ECTA Center's Practice Improvement Tools: Using the DEC Recommended Practice, especially the Family topic and tools.
Article 3: Family and Professional Collaboration
Engaging families in early intervention and developing family-professional partnerships is critical for success. Therefore we are continuing our newsletter series with a focus on Division for Early Childhood Recommended Practices (DEC RPs) Family Practices.
This article will spotlight the 4 remaining Family Practices related to Family and Professional Collaboration, which emphasize the importance of building relationships and working together to achieve mutually agreed-upon outcomes and goals that promote family competencies and support the child’s development.
What are the Practices that build Family and Professional Collaboration?
F7. Practitioners work with the family to identify, access, and use formal and informal resources and supports to achieve family-identified outcomes or goals.
F8. Practitioners provide the family of a young child who has or is at risk for developmental delay/disability, and who is a dual language learner, with information about the benefits of learning in multiple languages for the child’s growth and development.
F9. Practitioners help families know and understand their rights.
F10. Practitioners inform families about leadership and advocacy skill-building opportunities and encourage those who are interested to participate.
Download a table (pdf) of what the practices look like and don’t look like.
Tip: Use the examples above or additional examples of DEC RPs to reflect on your own practices.
Explore the following activities to extend your learning!
Where can I learn more?
Be sure to follow us on Facebook if you want to receive additional resources, encouragement, and opportunities to engage with others on the DEC RPs throughout the year! You can also visit the DEC RPs website which has numerous resources connected to the RPs, including examples of what they look like in practice. Additional resources can also be found by visiting the ECTA Center's Practice Improvement Tools: Using the DEC Recommended Practice, especially the Family topic and tools.
