Publication

An exploration of early intervention for preschool children with additional needs in the family support context

Bonotto, Melissa
Citation
Abstract
Early intervention for young children with additional needs is an important area of policy and practice in the Irish context. While there is strong evidence suggesting the importance of early intervention for this cohort, there remains a dearth in Irish social science research exploring the role of Family Support (FS) in early intervention for young children with additional needs. This research therefore aims to explore early intervention happening ‘early in a child’s life’ with preschool children with additional needs in the FS context. An Ecological System Theory (Bronfenbrenner 1979; Bronfenbrenner and Morris 2006) provides a basis for this study with an emphasis on examining interactions between different levels of the system from micro-meso to exo macro as well as chronosystems. It is a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews and focus groups with parents and teachers, and the Mosaic Approach (Clark, 2005) to capture the views of children with additional needs attending a Family Resource Centre (FRC) preschool. Characterizing as a flexible design (Robson, 2007), it also used the Family Star Early Years (Outcome Star, 2018), an international used scale with parents. The research took place in six different settings in five FRCs, the largest community-based FS programme in Ireland. It used Thematic (Brown and Clarke, 2006) and descriptive analysis (Robson, 2010), and case vignettes (Stokes and Schmidt, 2012) to highlight participants’ experiences and views. Findings indicate that meaningful interactions are essential for children with additional needs in relation to both their immediate environment (micro-meso) and the wider organisational and policy context (exo-macro). At the micro-meso level, meaningful interactions such as inclusion, social interactions, being outdoors and ‘being there’ for the child seemed to be the most significant. In addition, bidirectional meaningful interactions from the micro-meso to the wider exo macro environments, based on reciprocal communications and trustful relationships in this dynamic structure across different levels, were found to be fundamental to facilitate early intervention at a young age. Overall, this study finds that a FRC preschool (a preschool based in, and part of a Family Resource Centre) is a primary Family Support intervention, because of its role in supporting children with additional needs and their parents, improving overall well-being. This study presents an ecological framework of early intervention for children with additional needs in the FS Support context that contributes to the knowledge and understanding of meaningful interactions and its inter-relations across different levels of the child’s ecology. It also makes recommendations for service providers and policymakers based on the research findings, such as the coexistence of FS and early intervention.
Funder
Publisher
NUI Galway
Publisher DOI
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Ireland
CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IE