Strategies of Professionals in Pediatric Rehabilitation to Engage the Child in Method Implementation and Outcome Evaluation/Re-assessment. An Empirical Study Involving Greek Professionals
Author: Marianna Antoniadou
The construct of child engagement is aligned with the principles of family-centered care and children’s universal rights documents. The aim of the present study was to investigate the ex-periences of Greek professionals, working in pediatric rehabilitation settings, regarding child engagement in the intervention process. The study aimed to describe the strategies professionals use to promote child engagement and handle child disengagement in method implementa-tion and outcome evaluation. A qualitative approach was employed, and 11 interviews were conduced with professionals. The qualitative data was analysed by inductive thematic analysis. After the analysis, four main themes emerged: “Child engagement was described as a significant construct expressed in an individual way”, “Intrinsic and extrinsic motivators used as strategies to enhance child engagement in method implementation and outcome evaluation/re-assessment”, “Professionals prevented child disengagement (before it occurred) and responded to child disengagement (after it occurred)” and “Contextual factors influenced professionals’ child engagement strategies”. In this study, child engagement was described as a dynamic, transactional process and the Contextual model of Therapeutic Change was used to structure the discussion section. The results of the present study confirmed previous findings indicated that a supportive relationship can be built by creating a safe environment, listening, imitating, and empathizing with the child. Positive expectancies can be created by informing children about the reason why the tasks were selected and the occurrence of the re-assessment process. Coaching can be considered an effective method for building new skills to children outside the therapeutic environment.
