Perceived Parent Needs for Improving Parent Participation in School-Based Therapies for Children with Disabilities Using the Parent-Therapist Partnership Survey.

Rehabilitative and habilitative therapies can help children with disabilities increase independence and overall wellbeing. However, children and their caregivers face many barriers to accessing these therapies and often rely on the school for therapy access. Given the limited resources available within the special education system, increasing parent involvement in special education therapies could improve service delivery. However, providers must first understand what parents need to participate in therapies before attempting to engage families. 217 parents completed an online survey consisting of the Parent-Therapist Partnership Survey and demographic questionnaires about theirfamiliesand their child[ren] with disabilities. The percentage of needs parents endorsed as important and thepercentageofimportantneedsendorsedasunmetwere calculated. Differences across demographic variables were assessed. Overall, parents reported an average of 75% of needs as important with significantly more needs endorsed as important regarding being an informed, engaged member of the child's care team (M = 83%) than needs related to support and guidance (M = 65%, p < 0.001). Furthermore, parentsreportedan average of 58% of important needs as unmet, with no significant differences in subscale averages. Significant associations were found for race/ethnicity, education, income, partner availability, number of children with disabilities in the household, transportation access, neighborhood opportunities, parent efficacy and social, emotional, and behavioral concerns. Parents reported a high percentage of needs as important, but a large percentage of these important needs were considered unmet. Significant disparities based on racial/ethnic identities and access to resources were found. In order to successfully engage parents in special education therapy activities, providers must work to understand and address parents' engagement needs, paying special attention to each family's unique circumstances to optimize engagement.

A critical examination of Illinois' child welfare information systems and its utility for identifying and monitoring children and youth with special health care needs for front- and back-end users.

BACKGROUND: Children and youth with special health care needs (CYSHCN) are at an increased risk for abuse and neglect, and they experience worse outcomes during and after child protective services involvement, as compared to typically developing peers. Identifying and monitoring these vulnerable youth is essential for reducing disparities and optimizing service delivery. However, many states, including Illinois, lack systems for efficient identification and monitoring. OBJECTIVE: (1) To examine existing Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (ILDCFS) data systems to determine if a source exists that would allow for identification and monitoring of CYSHCN; and (2) To understand ILDCFS personnel's experience with identifying and monitoring CYSHCN. METHODS: First, relevant ILDCFS data sources were identified, pulled, and examined for completeness. Second, ILDCFS personnel completed a mixed-methods survey assessing how they identified and monitored CYSHCN as well as what barriers they experienced in conducting these activities. Conceptual content analysis was utilized to obtain counts of different methods used to track and monitor youth as well as to identify barriers to these processes. RESULTS: Six data sources were identified as being relevant through ILDCFS' data systems, but none were complete enough for effectively tracking and identifying CYSHCN. Survey responses indicated no standardized, systemic process for identifying and monitoring CYSHCN, with many personnel relying on reports from other involved parties. CONCLUSIONS: In order to identify CYSHCN and monitor well-being, a standardized process within ILDCFS systems is needed to provide complete, accurate, and timely data for CYSHCN, allowing for both system-wide and individual-level monitoring.

Parent satisfaction with the parent-provider partnership and therapy service delivery for children with disabilities during COVID-19: Associations with sociodemographic variables.

INTRODUCTION: The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) significantly disrupted therapy service delivery for children with disabilities and their families. Parents of children with disabilities have been particularly impacted as a large degree of responsibility has been placed on them to both manage and deliver therapies remotely. However, little is known regarding whether sociodemographic factors are associated with parents' perceptions of therapy service delivery during COVID-19. This study explored the relationship between sociodemographic factors and parents' satisfaction with therapies for children with disabilities during COVID-19. METHOD: Two hundred seven parents of children with disabilities completed an online survey battery that included the Family-Provider Partnership Scale and sociodemographic characteristics and assessed their satisfaction with their child[ren]'s therapies during COVID-19. RESULTS: Access to telehealth, receipt of only school-based therapies, parent education, number of household essential workers, and total number of children were associated with satisfaction with therapy service and/or the family-provider partnership. DISCUSSION: By better understanding the association between sociodemographic factors and parent perception of therapy service delivery, providers can better support families in optimizing service delivery during the remainder of COVID-19 mitigation efforts and during future periods of service disruption. This study provides insight into the sociodemographic characteristics that are associated with lower levels of satisfaction and thus require more tailored support from providers. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Parent-Therapist Partnership Survey: Parent Feedback and Psychometric Properties.

Parents of children with disabilities are an important part of their child's special education team. However, parents often have limited involvement in school-based therapies that are provided as part of a child's Individualized Education Program. The field lacks tools to assess the domain and extent of parent needs for optimal engagement in their child's special education therapies. Study one assessed the Parent-Therapist Partnership Survey's (PTPS) (formerly known as the Needs of Parents Questionnaire -School-Based Therapy Version) measure's clarity, fit, and comprehensiveness. Study two assessed the factor structure and internal consistency. Two factors emerged - Need to Be an Informed, Engaged Member of Their Child's Team, and Need for Support and Guidance. Internal consistency was 0.93 for the overall scale. The PTPS can serve as a powerful measure to better identify opportunities to engage parents in school therapeutic goals while improving parent-provider collaboration in school-based therapies.

Perceived parent needs in engaging with therapeutic supports for children with disabilities in school settings: An exploratory study.

BACKGROUND: Parent engagement in therapeutic services for children with disabilities could optimize service delivery while addressing service disparities. However, service providers must first understand parents' needs to effectively involve parents. AIMS: This study examines what needs parents identify as important when engaging with school-based therapies and how well these needs are being met. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: Parents of children with Individualized Education Plans rated statements related to their needs for trust, information, support and guidance, and personal needs when engaging with their child's therapies. Parents also provided demographic information on them and their child[ren] with a disability. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: Parents endorsed an average of 83 % of needs as important but 51 % of needs as unmet. On average, 65 % of needs related to feeling trusted by service providers were met. In contrast, needs related to receivings upport and guidance (M = 58 %), information (M = 55 %), and addressing parent's own needs (M = 53 %) were frequently unmet. Parents indicated that needs related to feeling trusted by service providers were most frequently met. In contrast, needs related to receiving information were most frequently unmet. Race/ethnicity and number of children with a disability influenced the number of needs endorsed as important and unmet. CONCLUSION: This feasibility study suggests that parents find a variety of needs regarding their interactions with school-based providers as important to them. However, given the high proportion of needs indicated being unmet, significant gaps likely exist in effectively engaging parents, especially for Parents of Color and parents with multiple children with disabilities. IMPLICATIONS: This study provides a list of tangible needs school-based providers can use to improve parent engagement with school-based therapies. School-based providers and administrators can use the needs identified as important and unmet in this study to create actionable steps that aim to improve parent engagement in school-based services.

Bias and sensitivity to task constraints in spontaneous relational attention.

Two experiments examined factors that predicted children's tendencies to match objects versus relations across scenes when no instruction was given. Specifically, we assessed the presence of higher relational responding in children by (a) age, (b) greater presumed experience in generating relations through socialization in China versus the United States, and (c) in children with greater manipulated experience via a relational priming task. Experiment 1 showed that Chinese and U.S. children across all ages showed an initial bias to match objects versus relations across scenes. However, older children in both regions were more likely to notice features of the task that indicated attending to relational matches was a more reliable solution, and shifted their responding toward relations over the course of the task. Experiment 2 replicated the object-mapping bias and age effects within U.S. children while also examining the impact of directly manipulating children's relational experiences to test the malleability of the bias. Before the main scene-mapping task, children did a relation generation task known to prime attention to relations. This did not override the initial bias toward object mapping, but it magnified the role of age, making older children increasingly sensitive to task features that prompted relational matches, further shifting their responding toward relations over the course of the task.

Erratum to: The Impact of Stimulus Presentation and Size on Preference.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1007/s40617-016-0148-6.].

The Impact of Stimulus Presentation and Size on Preference.

The impact of stimulus size and presentation on choice during a preference assessment was investigated using a modified multiple-stimulus without replacement (MSWO) technique. Stimuli were either presented with a uniform magnitude, as determined by mass, or in a manner consistent with caregiver report of reinforcer consumption. While both assessment procedures identified the same top three preferred items in three out of five cases, greater variability in the preference rank of less preferred items was observed between assessments.

When the television is on: the impact of infant-directed video on 6- and 18-month-olds' attention during toy play and on parent-infant interaction.

The pattern of 6- and 18-month-old infants' and their parents' attention to toys, a commercially available infant-directed video, and each other were examined in a 20 min free-play context as a function of whether the television was on or off. The results indicated that infants at both ages directed significantly more of their attention to the toys than the video when the toys were novel. Attention to the parent was low across the session. Parents directed most of their attention to the infants and the toys and relatively little to the video. They also talked to and played with their infants less when the video was on than when it was off. These results are discussed in terms of Cohen's (1972) model of attention-getting and attention-holding and the implications of this for learning and distractibility.