Early Intervention Administrator Navigator: Provider Retention
IDEA Leadership for Retention
Is your program struggling to find and keep early intervention (EI) service providers? You are not alone.
High turnover can disrupt the continuity of care for children with disabilities, impacting the effectiveness of early intervention services. With forty-six states experiencing shortages of qualified providers, early intervention administrators are asking for practical solutions to address this persistent and deep-rooted challenge.
Research shows that EI provider shortages are driven by a range of issues. The Lead IDEA Center’s EI Retention Navigator highlights pressing retention issues and the local EI program administrator’s role in proactively addressing them.
Select each issue below to:
46 out of 50 states cited a lack of qualified early intervention service providers...which can have adverse effects on providing early intervention services to children and their families.
- Government Accountability Office, 2023 Source
These tools have been co-developed by:
What are your program's issues?
Stretched Thin
Large Caseloads and Stress
As the number of children eligible for Part C and Part B/619 services continues to increase, EI providers must constantly adapt and confront situations that are beyond their control to ensure that young children with disabilities can learn and thrive, often resulting in burnout.
Evolving Complexity
Family Needs
By meeting families of young children with disabilities where they are—honoring their personal, cultural, and community contexts—early intervention providers build trust, deliver more effective support, and experience greater satisfaction and impact, helping to retain a committed and resilient workforce.
This tool was developed in partnership with the Early Childhood Intervention Personnel Center, a federally funded technical assistance center working to build the capacity of higher education, state agencies, professional organizations, territories, and tribal nations to increase their capacity to attract, prepare, and retain a qualified, competent, interdisciplinary, and effective workforce in early childhood intervention.