In my first fieldwork experience in early intervention services I observed parents who did not feel satisfied with the family-centered care they were receiving. I wanted to see which factors encourage or inhibit family-centered practice in the occupational therapy intervention process; this paper was a great opportunity to dig into it. I wish the authors of the source article had stated the questions they asked the parents whose children were receiving occupational therapy services. I think this was a weakness in their study; it would have been nice if they had provided more results to help the reader decide if they categorized the data correctly in the designated themes they chose.
I learned that time and support were central themes that were brought to the researchers attention. Some families who received early intervention services felt they didn’t receive enough support or time during intervention services. When providing occupational therapy services within early intervention, I will remember to remember the perspective of the families that felt overwhelmed in trying to juggle work, household demands and care-taking. It is important to help educate the families about the importance of being involved in the intervention plan and make accommodations to the families by implementing interesting activities to improve parental involvement. Another option occupational therapists should keep in mind is providing audio or a different visual educational tools like videos to accommodate to their schedules or preferred learning style.
I would like to see more research about why these parents wouldn’t read the handouts. It would be interesting to see if they would learn better with different teaching methods. There was clearly a communication problem; the cause of the parents’ non-involvement in the intervention process was inconclusive. I wonder if the parents would be willing to listen to audio recordings about the same educational material; they could listen while they performed other household tasks and they might be more willing to participate in the intervention. The study didn’t seem to produce many other questions and more research is needed on how to solve dissatisfaction of occupational therapy services. This kept me wondering about the solutions to the problem that was revealed in this study with some caregivers of those who have a child receiving early intervention services.
