Toolkit
Proactively Addressing Evolving Child and Family Needs
These strategies highlight research and best practices, along with short, medium, and long-term solutions, as essential to proactively address evolving child and family needs.
Strategy B
Provide ongoing job-embedded professional learning supports targeted to providers' needs.
Strategy C
Engage and empower families through regular communication that recognizes their unique needs.
Program Story
Mr. Ellison: Increasingly Complex Child and Family Needs
Learn from Mr. Ellison as he strengthens his team’s capacity and confidence to address evolvingly complex child and family needs, and serve them within a robust support system.
Strategy A
Understand and support IDEA implementation.
Ensure providers and program staff are equipped to meet the legal and administrative requirements of IDEA and deliver effective service coordination.
Possible Actions
- Conduct a provider content knowledge assessment of providers’ understanding of IDEA legal and administrative requirements related to Part C and Part B/619.
- Utilize resources from ED’s IDEA website and technical assistance centers, policy letters, and guidance to build foundational knowledge and clarify IDEA requirements for both Part C and Part B/619.
- Build capacity for service coordination by increasing your own and staff’s understanding of their responsibilities under Part C of IDEA, especially in addressing each child and family’s needs - regardless of the complexity - through effective service coordination under Part C of IDEA.
- Ensure program staff conduct thorough assessments of each child’s and family’s unique challenges, needs, and background characteristics that may affect engagement in Part C service delivery.
- Assign staff, including a service coordinator, whose competencies and expertise most closely align with the child’s and family’s identified needs to ensure responsive and effective support.
- Engage families and caregivers’ to understand their concerns, priorities and both existing and needed resources.
Improve coordination and deepen provider-family engagement to develop and implement Individualized Family Service Plan’s (IFSP) that meet the needs of children and families – especially those with complex needs.
Possible Actions
- Ensure the IFSP team has a deep understanding of the full continuum of services and supports available via Part C and Part B/619.
- Facilitate timely and thorough assessments to identify developmental concerns and determine the need for further evaluations and specialized services.
- Develop partnerships with Parent Training and Information Centers (PTIs), advocacy groups, and community organizations to expand access to resources and supports.
- Implement structured mechanisms for gathering and responding to family feedback on satisfaction, unmet needs, and barriers to accessing services.
- Ensure that each child and family has a well-developed IFSP that includes present levels of development, family priorities resource needs, and clearly defined, measurable outcomes.
- Conduct regular, structured meetings with IFSP teams to review progress and discuss additional supports for children and families with complex needs.
- Ensure families receive ongoing, accessible information about their rights under IDEA Part C, procedural safeguards, and state-specific guidelines. Maintain open communication with families, caregivers, parent groups, PTIs, and advocacy organizations to better understand and respond to family needs.
Embed sustainable and continuous improvement practices to reinforce high-quality IFSPs for children and families with complex needs.
Possible Actions
- Use data from IFSP reviews, family feedback, and child outcomes to identify trends and guide improvements.
- Create tiered professional development pathways that include onboarding, coaching, and advanced training on IFSP development for complex needs.
- Participate in a community of practice with other program administrators to understand and implement creative solutions within the parameters of IDEA to better engage families with complex needs.
- Establish a process for regularly and systematically sharing new learning with staff, as well as families, throughout the year.
- Collaborate with health, mental health, and social service agencies to ensure IFSPs reflect integrated supports for complex needs.
Strategy B
Provide ongoing job-embedded professional learning supports targeted to providers’ needs.
Provide resources for staff to support parent understanding and application of intervention strategies for the home and community.
Possible Actions
- Provide staff with accessible and useful resources, such as guides and toolkits, to share with families during home visits and IFSP meetings.
- Promote the use of reflective practice and mentoring in which staff regularly assess the impact of their interactions on families with complex needs.
- Establish systems that ensure families have open lines of communication to discuss their individual circumstances and family’s needs.
- Connect staff with local Parent Training and Information Centers (PTIs) to access additional resources to share with families.
Provide learning opportunities to EI staff that focus on effective communication techniques and intervention strategies to successfully engage families.
Possible Actions
- Assess the knowledge and skills of IFSP teams and service coordinators and provide learning opportunities to meet the specific needs of a complex child and family.
- Collect input from staff on what additional support they would like to receive to help families with complex needs (e.g. supporting families with mental health needs, supporting families with linguistic needs).
- Leverage new research and supporting resources to identify effective, evidence-based practices that promote active family involvement in the IFSP process, especially families with complex needs.
- Provide a consultant with appropriate expertise to support staff to be able to meet the needs of complex child and family needs.
Integrate family engagement and intervention strategies into staff onboarding and ongoing professional development.
Possible Actions
- Identify veteran and experienced staff on your team who display highly effective family engagement and intervention practices to serve as mentors for new staff.
- Assess the learning needs of mentors and provide training and support to meet their needs.
- Schedule regular check-ins with both mentors and new staff to gather feedback and data on the effectiveness of supports (e.g., coaching, onboarding, professional learning) offered to new staff about engagement with families and children with complex needs
- Support the service coordinator to collaborate and provide training and technical assistance to community-based program staff (e.g., childcare, mental health professionals, medical professionals) to support complex child and families who receive Part C services.
Strategy C
Engage and empower families through regular communication that recognizes their unique needs.
Build your capacity to communicate with families to address their complex needs.
Possible Actions
- Be accessible to families, and model compassionate problem solving for staff.
- Seek professional learning opportunities focused on communication and engagement with families with complex needs.
- Review IDEA to understand family engagement requirements under IDEA Part C and 619.
- Help staff understand the need to establish healthy boundaries when communicating and interacting with families.
- Regularly reflect on your own biases and assumptions and support staff to do the same.
Build strong relationships with families, especially those with complex needs.
Possible Actions
- Establish a consistent check in (formal and informal) with staff to assess and strengthen their engagement of families and children with complex needs.
- Assign providers to families with complex needs who have a lighter caseload so they can spend more time engaging and problem solving with the family.
- Build positive relationships with families by modeling empathy and understanding their perspectives.
- Encourage staff to support families to engage in community events and activities.
Engage families to be leaders and active participants to serve on decision-making committees that inform policies, practices, and programs.
Possible Actions
- Encourage and facilitate staff’s efforts to encourage families to engage with groups in the community, such as parent advisory councils or Interagency Coordinating Council (ICC) to understand and provide input on issues related to IDEA programs and services.
- Provide a variety of options to best meet the needs of the family so that they can fully participate in activities that inform policies and practices (e.g., family survey, focus groups).
- Communicate with families to provide words of encouragement and reaffirm the importance of their active participation.
Related IDEA Considerations
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) mandates that states develop and implement a statewide, comprehensive, coordinated, multidisciplinary, interagency system to deliver early intervention services to eligible children as outlined in an Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP) (20 U.S. Code §1435 (a)). To ensure that families are active partners in the services their child receive, IDEA Part B Section 619 requires education agencies, including those providing 619 transition services, build and sustain collaborative relationships with families (as mandated by 20 U.S.C. § 1412 (s) (5)). IDEA also mandates the involvement of a multidisciplinary team in the development of an IFSP for infants and toddlers with disabilities, which includes parents (20 U.S. Code §1436 (A) (3)). For example, early intervention providers must ensure that parents actively participate in IFSP meetings by providing adequate notice; scheduling at mutually convenient times; and using alternative means of participation, such as telephone or virtual conferences, when necessary. They also must ensure that parents understand the meeting proceedings by offering interpreters or other accessibility supports. If parents cannot attend, the school must document efforts to involve them, including telephone calls, letters, or visits.
Additionally, an IFSP must contain an explanation of the family’s resources, priorities, and concerns relating to enhancing the development of the family’s infant or toddler with a disability (20 U.S. Code §1436 (d) (2)). Here, information on the complex needs of each family participating in the IFSP process is captured to help understand the individualized needs of infants, toddlers and their families that will help inform the services they receive. Authentic engagement with families of infants and toddlers with disabilities is an important tool for providers to practice helping inform this section of the IFSP.