Perceptions of Part C Coordinators on Family Assessment in Early Intervention.

Early intervention services for infants, toddlers, and their families have been available for over a quarter of a century with the inception of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act Amendments (P.L. 99457) in October 1986, and states have implemented a variety of family assessment practices required by the law. Early intervention services are defined as the "provision of support and resources to families of young children from members of informal and formal social support networks that both directly and indirectly influence child, parent, and family functioning" (Dunst, 1985, p. 179; Dunst, Trivette, &. Jodry, 1997).Since 1989, regulations in the Federal Register required that family assessment should be based on information provided by the family through a personal interview (Winton Sc Bailey, 1990). Bailey (1991b) described family assessment as a "functional process driven by the mandate to provide individualized services that support families as caregivers and decision makers" (p. 27). From the beginning, family assessment was meant to be a method for the family to share information about their personal needs and family strengths in order to build intervention services.Rationale, Purpose, and Research QuestionsPrior to 2011, the only requirement for family assessment was that a parent interview be conducted to ascertain the resources, priorities, and concerns of the family. This limited guidance raised concerns about the process of family assessment in early intervention (McWilliam, 2012; McWilliam et al., 2011; Sexton, Snyder, Rheams, Barron-Sharp &. Perez, 1991). In 2011, new regulations in the Federal Register added language that family assessment information should be obtained by qualified personnel through the administration of an assessment tool along with an interview. Early intervention professionals in states across the country have adapted a variety of family assessment processes to meet the personal interview requirement. Early interventionists in rural settings at the provider level also have struggled with the family assessment process and access to families.There are several challenges states faced while trying to implement the family assessment regulations, including professionals' understanding of family assessment, limited training, short timelines required by law, and minimal research on family assessment. McWilliam (2012) noted, "The first important issue facing the field is that professionals need to develop serious attempts to ascertain family-level needs" (p. 228) during the family assessment process. Assessing the needs of families can be easily glossed over with a short interview if professionals are not trained in conducting family assessment, especially in rural settings where access to the family may be even more difficult due to the travel time needed to reach the family. Also, service providers may not understand the importance of the process, which leads to less time spent completing the family assessment. Actual practice may be to simply identify weaknesses in the family and child's environment instead of delving into a full family assessment (McWilliam et al., 2011), with some providers completing interviews very quickly. McWilliam et al. noted that family assessment "is usually carried out without any particular methods or procedures or with the use of a home-grown questionnaire" (p. 46). Since the law includes the need for an assessment tool, professionals at the provider level are using a variety of tools that may not be evidence-based. These tools may include checklists, questions about a list of routines, a written survey, or informal parent ratings of routines.Limited training also affects the usefulness of family assessment in the field. Early intervention service providers are not trained or are not experienced in family focused assessment (McWilliam et al., 2011; Sexton et al., 1991; Vincent &. Salisbury, 1988). "Service providers are required to sort out caregivers' perspectives about their children's participation from other family information such as interaction patterns, needs, strengths, resources, concerns, priorities, or other aspects of family life" (Campbell, 2011, p. …