The effects of family-centered service coordination: A social validity study.

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to design, implement, and analyze the effects of family-centered service coordination to families with children, birth to three years of age, who participate in Part H of IDEA. The research questions investigated were: (1) does the family's level of satisfaction improve when family-centered service coordination procedures, acquired through training, are implemented? and, (2) does the training program result in implementation of this family-centered service coordination model? The participants included three service coordinators and nine families. Three families were served by each of the three service coordinators. Data were collected monthly from each of the nine families using a questionnaire and a procedural reliability checklist. Procedural reliability was calculated across all conditions to determine the degree to which the service coordinators implemented the procedures of family-centered service coordination they learned about in training. A family-centered paradigm was used to develop the research questionnaire, training program, and service delivery model. The defining characteristics of this paradigm were: (a) incorporation of family support principles, (b) family-centered intervention practices, and (c) an enabling and empowering philosophy. A multiple-baseline design across subjects was used to study the effects of implementation on satisfaction reported by the families. The stages of this design included Pre-Training, Post Training, and Implementation. The Implementation Phase was added, again in a multiple-baseline design, because none of the service coordinators adequately implemented the model in the Post Training Phase. The Implementation Phase was initiated in a different sequence than that used to stagger the training. The duration of each experimental phase depended on the responses given each month by the families. Results indicated that when the family-centered model was implemented, families reported a high degree of satisfaction and a low degree of dissatisfaction. In contrast, when the model was not implemented, families reported very little satisfaction and a high degree of dissatisfaction. Moreover, training alone did not lead to implementation of the family-centered model. With individualized support, service coordinators achieved better implementation.