Recommended Practices

Practitioners conduct assessments in the child's dominant language and in additional languages if the child is learning more than one language.

assessment

Practitioners conduct assessments that include all areas of development and behavior to learn about the child's strengths, needs, preferences, and interests.

assessment

Practitioners implement systematic ongoing assessment to identify learning targets, plan activities, and monitor the child's progress to revise instruction as needed.

assessment

Practitioners obtain information about the child's skills in daily activities, routines, and environments such as home, center, and community.

assessment

Practitioners report assessment results so that they are understandable and useful to families.

assessment

Practitioners use a variety of methods, including observation and interviews, to gather assessment information from multiple sources, including the child's family and other significant individuals in the child's life.

assessment

Practitioners use assessment materials and strategies that are appropriate for the child's age and level of development and accommodate the child's sensory, physical, communication, cultural, linguistic, social, and emotional characteristics.

assessment

Practitioners use assessment tools with sufficient sensitivity to detect child progress, especially for the child with significant support needs.

assessment

Practitioners use clinical reasoning in addition to assessment results to identify the child's current levels of functioning and to determine the child's eligibility and plan for instruction.

assessment

Practitioners work as a team with the family and other professionals to gather assessment information.

assessment

Practitioners work with the family to identify family preferences for assessment processes.

assessment

Practitioners and the family work together to create outcomes or goals, develop individualized plans, and implement practices that address the family's priorities and concerns and the child's strengths and needs.

family

Practitioners are responsive to the family's concerns, priorities, and changing life circumstances.

family

Practitioners build trusting and respectful partnerships with the family through interactions that are sensitive and responsive to cultural, linguistic, and socio-economic diversity

family

Practitioners engage the family in opportunities that support and strengthen parenting knowledge and skills and parenting competence and confidence in ways that are flexible, individualized, and tailored to the family's preferences.

family

Practitioners help families know and understand their rights.

family

Practitioners inform families about leadership and advocacy skill-building opportunities and encourage those who are interested to participate.

family

Practitioners provide the family of a young child who has or is at risk for developmental delay/disability, and who is a dual language learner, with information about the benefits of learning in multiple languages for the child's growth and development.

family

Practitioners provide the family with up-to-date, comprehensive and unbiased information in a way that the family can understand and use to make informed choices and decisions.

family

Practitioners support family functioning, promote family confidence and competence, and strengthen family-child relationships by acting in ways that recognize and build on family strengths and capacities

family

Practitioners work with the family to identify, access, and use formal and informal resources and supports to achieve family-identified outcomes or goals.

family

Practitioners promote the child's cognitive development by observing, interpreting, and responding intentionally to the child's exploration, play, and social activity by joining in and expanding on the child's focus, actions, and intent.

interaction

Practitioners promote the child's communication development by observing, interpreting, responding contingently, and providing natural consequences for the child's verbal and non-verbal communication and by using language to label and expand on the child's requests, needs, preferences, or interests.

interaction

Practitioners promote the child's problem-solving behavior by observing, interpreting, and scaffolding in response to the child's growing level of autonomy and self-regulation.

interaction

Practitioners promote the child's social development by encouraging the child to initiate or sustain positive interactions with other children and adults during routines and activities through modeling, teaching, feedback, or other types of guided support.

interaction

Practitioners promote the child's social-emotional development by observing, interpreting, and responding contingently to the range of the child's emotional expressions.

interaction

Practitioners and families may collaborate with each other to identify one practitioner from the team who serves as the primary liaison between the family and other team members based on child and family priorities and needs.

teaming and collaboration

Practitioners and families work together as a team to systematically and regularly exchange expertise, knowledge, and information to build team capacity and jointly solve problems, plan, and implement interventions.

teaming and collaboration

Practitioners representing multiple disciplines and families work together as a team to plan and implement supports and services to meet the unique needs of each child and family.

teaming and collaboration

Practitioners use communication and group facilitation strategies to enhance team functioning and interpersonal relationships with and among team members.

teaming and collaboration

Team members assist each other to discover and access community-based services and other informal and formal resources to meet family-identified child or family needs.

teaming and collaboration

Practitioners in sending and receiving programs exchange information before, during, and after transition about practices most likely to support the child's successful adjustment and positive outcomes.

transition

Practitioners use a variety of planned and timely strategies with the child and family before, during, and after the transition to support successful adjustment and positive outcomes for both the child and family.

transition