Author: Nikolopoulos Marios

Abstract:

Background: The fundamental goal of intervention services is to provide help and support families so that they can maximize their children's growth and development. This study explored health care professionals’ perceptions of family engagement and ratings in sessions with children in need of special support in different intervention contexts in Greece.
Methods: The “Family involvement in habilitation” scale, PRIME questionnaires and interviews were used to explore and analyze the health care professionals’ perceptions, the level of child and family engagement in sessions and the strategies the professionals use to engage them.
Results: The results indicated moderate to high rating in interventionists’ perceptions for family engagement in the different steps of the intervention process, with the professionals leading the interventions and the family having a more supplementary role of making suggestions and giving feedback. The level of family engagement in sessions was moderate to low, while child engagement rating during sessions was higher. The three units of the intervention system related to family engagement were identified and presented as the 3 main themes of interviews: Professionals, Family, Environment (e.g. in-service context) using the Process-Person-Context-Time model of human development (PPCT) as a theoretical lens. The main strategies indicated concerned the “Parents’ informing”, “Parents’ training” and “Parents supporting”.
Conclusions: Although therapists referred strategies for implementing families, there is a need for new ideas and systems to create more family-centered approaches. This study contributed to an understanding of the factors that influence family engagement in health professionals’ practice. However, it would be valuable to examine how families perceived their engagement in these interventions as well.

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