Caregiver Progress in Early Intervention: A Collaborative Approach to Goal Writing and Data Collection

Purpose: Effective early intervention (EI) services hinge on a partnership between speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and caregivers. Caregivers play a pivotal role in this partnership, as they must learn language facilitation strategies from SLPs and then implement these strategies with their children. Unfortunately, caregiver progress has often been overlooked, in both research and practice. The purpose of this clinical focus article is to underscore the importance of monitoring caregiver progress in EI and highlight practical data collection methods to do so.

Method: This clinical focus article reviews the value of collecting caregiver data at baseline, during EI sessions, and over the course of a caregiver-implemented intervention. A fictional clinical scenario is used to illustrate how these methods can be applied. In this scenario, an EI SLP works with a caregiver to set goals, teaches the caregiver language facilitation strategies using the See and Say Sequence, and measures progress using various types of caregiver data.

Conclusions: Collecting caregiver data can be a feasible and useful practice in EI. Caregiver data can guide SLPs in setting caregiver and child goals, in promoting caregiver practice during EI sessions, and in monitoring progress over time. Furthermore, it has the potential to increase caregiver engagement and build caregiver confidence in the EI process.