Early Intervention Visits

Early Intervention (EI) visits are crucial opportunities to support your child’s development and empower your family. These visits provide strategies to enhance your child’s growth while ensuring your active participation in the process. Here’s what you can expect.

Early intervention providers often come to your home. This is to keep your child in a comfortable, familiar environment where learning happens naturally. They also want to help with strategies you can apply directly to your daily routines.

One hallmark of EI visits is the coaching approach. EI providers guide and support you as the parent or caregiver to implement strategies that benefit your child.

• Role of Providers: They coach YOU—they don’t “fix” the child. Parents and caregivers are central to the process.
• Key Method: Providers often model techniques and give you opportunities to practice.

Your active involvement is one of the most important pieces of successful Early Intervention.

– Your Role:

– Share what’s working and where you need support.

– Collaborate with providers to set goals and adjust strategies.

– Try activities and report what helps.

Early Intervention is designed to enhance your child’s development while supporting your family. Some key goals include:

– Building your child’s skills across areas such as communication, motor, and social-emotional development.

– Increasing language exposure and access.

– Addressing family routines to make them more accessible to your child.

EI providers should help ensure that your child has full access to language. Whether through spoken language, sign language, or both, rich language exposure is fundamental to your child’s growth.

– Tip: Ask providers how they are supporting both communication and language access.

– Collaboration: Be ready to share challenges, ask questions, and test strategies.

– Empowerment: Early intervention visits should leave you feeling equipped to support your child beyond the sessions.

– Respect: Your family’s culture and expectations should guide who you work with and how.

– Hands & Voices: [Link to Hands & Voices]

– Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI): [Link to EHDI site]

– American Society for Deaf Children: [Link to ASDC site]

– Articles on language exposure: [Link to resource]