Publication alert: Characterizing caregiver strategy use to promote young children’s participation

Mary, Vera, and Vivian along with CPERL alum Dianna and our colleague Christine Imms have a new publication coming out in the American Journal of Occupational Therapy. We leveraged a contemporary children's participation framework called the fPRC to classify newly collected data on >700 strategies used by close to 140 families enrolled in early intervention services and who took part in an NIH-funded pilot implementation trial of the electronic YC-PEM.

When reflecting on the coding process used in this manuscript, Vivian shared: "As our team had discussions and debates, I was able to gain a greater understanding about participation in young children. Through these discussions, I learned how to be a more tenacious lab member and am continuing to develop these skills."

[caption id="attachment_2433" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Fond memories from team brainstorming sessions in Summer 2019![/caption]

We found that caregivers identify a full range of participation-focused strategies to support their young child's participation in valued occupations within the home and community. These categorized data inform practitioners seeking to deliver evidence-based and participation-focused practice and will be leveraged to optimize a key feature of PEM+.