Recommended Practices: Strengthening Services and Supporting Quality

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Recommended Practices Strengthening Services
and Supporting Quality
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What is DEC?

The Division for Early Childhood of the Council
for Exceptional Children
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What is DEC?

• Membership Organization
• Birth through 8 years
• Young children with disabilities and other
  special needs
• Promotes policies and advances evidence-based
  practices

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Your DEC Connection

• Young Exceptional Children Journal of Early
  Intervention
• Annual International Conference
• www.dec-sped.org
• Monographs on hot topics in the field
• Regional professional development opportunities
• Policy Updates
• Recommended Practices series
• Position Statements and Concept Papers
• Committees, work groups, reviewers, special
  interest groups
• Awards
• Executive Board members
• Information and Referral

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Today we will focus on.

• What are Recommended Practices?
• Why they are important?
• How you can use them to support children and
  families?

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Setting the Context

• Scientifically-based Practices
• validated by research
• Evidence-based Practices
• best available research
• professional wisdom experience
• consumer values
• Recommended Practices
• set of practices designed to inform decisions
  about services

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History of Recommended Practices

• 2000
• Focus Groups
• Analyses Coding of
• Research Literature
• Synthesis
• Field Validation
• Multiple Products and
• Dissemination Efforts

• 1991
• Focus groups
• Field validated
• Book of
• Recommended
• Practices

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Investigators

• Barbara Smith
• Division for Early Childhood
• University of Colorado Denver
• David Sexton and Marcia Lobman
• LSU Health Sciences Center
• Mary McLean
• University Of Wisconsin Milwaukee
• Susan Sandall
• University of Washington

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Identifying Recommended Practices

• Experience Professional Wisdom

• Research-
• Based Practices

Field Validation
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Identifying Experiences and Values

• Focus Groups by Topical Area (e.g., assessment)
• Focus Groups by Role (e.g., family, practitioner,
  administrator)

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Identifying Research-Based Practices

• Identify Published Research
• 48 Journals Across Disciplines
• 1,019 Articles For Coding
• Coded to
• determine technical adequacy
• identify practices

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The Result

• 1,019 Articles Reviewed
• 843 (82) Had at Least One Recommended Practice
• Articles by Methodology
• Quantitative 454 (54)
• Single Subject 179 (21)
• Qualitative 74 (9)
• Mixed Method 13 (2)
• Descriptive/Survey 123 (15)

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Number of Journal Articles Supporting Each Strand

• Child-Focused 390
• Family-Based 218
• Policies, Procedures Systems Change 106
• Assessment 104
• Personnel Preparation 93
• Technology Applications 30
• Interdisciplinary Models - 28

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Synthesize And Syncretize Practices

• Integrate Literature Based Practices and
  Stakeholder Focus Group
• Which Practices Have Research Evidence to
  Support?
• Which Practices are Supported Only by Experience
  or Values?

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Field Validation of Practices

• Verification Among Experts
• Field Validation
• 200 Family Members
• 400 Practitioners
• 200 Administration/Higher Education
• Respond to
• This is a recommended practice (importance)
• Extent to which see the practice (usage)

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Recommended Practices

• Assessment (46)
• John Neisworth Stephen Bagnato
• Child-Focused Practices (27)
• Mark Wolery
• Family-Based Practices(17)
• Carol Trivette Carl Dunst
• Interdisciplinary Models (19)
• Robin McWilliam
• Technology Applications (22)
• Kathleen Stremel

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Recommended Practices

• Policies, Procedures, Systems Change (43)
• Gloria Harbin Christine Salisbury
• Personnel Preparation (66)
• Patricia Miller Vicki Stayton

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Why are Recommended Practices Important?

• Represents collective wisdom
• Identifies what practices work
• Provides a framework to define quality
• Supports positive outcomes
• Applies to all settings

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• Quality Practices
• Quality Service
• Better Outcomes

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Recommended Practices
Quality Practices for All Children
Program
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Child-Focused Practice Example

• C4. Play routines are structured to promote
  interaction, communication, and learning by
  defining roles for dramatic play, prompting
  engagement, prompting group friendship
  activities, and using specialized prompts.

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What does C4 look like?

• Adults join children in their play to keep
  children playing

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What does C4 look like?

• Use the childs preferences to increase
  engagement in a particular activity

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Assessment Practice Example

• A24. Professionals assess not only immediate
  mastery of a skill, but also whether the child
  can demonstrate the skill consistently across
  other settings and with other people.

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What does A24 look like?

• The team assesses the childs ability to walk in
  the classroom, on the playground, to and from the
  car
• and on the grass

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Family-Based Practice Example

• F1. Family members and professionals jointly
  develop appropriate family-identified outcomes.

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What does F1 look like?

• Professionals and family members share
  information before the IFSP/IEP meeting so that
  everyone has time to reflect and clarify their
  ideas

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Next Steps Practitioners

• Know what the evidence says
• Base your work on the evidence we have
• Sometimes you have to build the evidence
• Its called innovation!

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Next Steps Parents

• Research does matter!
• Demand that the services provided to your child
  and your family have the power of the entire
  field.

Gently
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Next Steps Researchers

• Build the evidence
• Continue to ask the questions
• Stir up the controversy
• Link innovation to research

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Next Steps Administrators

• Set the stage
• Focus the resources
• Demand excellence in services
• Monitor, measure, and account for quality