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
