Coaching in Early Intervention

Early Childhood Center Research Associate, Kayla O'Neill, interviews Developmental Therapist, Katherine Hargreaves about using the coaching model to deliver services to children in Indiana. Hargreaves has worked in both early intervention and/or Early Head Start in Maryland, Washington D.C., Virginia, Illinois, and Indiana. As part of the Indiana First Steps system, she has served as a developmental therapist, an Eligibility Determination Team member, a Local Planning and Coordinating Council member for Cluster G, and the early intervention services manager at Easterseals Crossroads in Indianapolis.

Transcript

Welcome to the Early Childhood On-the-Go Podcasts.  Where the Early Childhood Center team shares ideas and strategies for professionals and families. Dream big, start early.  Welcome to the Early Childhood On-the-Go podcast. Today we are recording live at the Early Childhood Center at the Indiana Institute on Disability and Community here in Bloomington, Indiana. I have a very special guest with me today – we’ve got Katherine Hargreaves. She works here at the Early Childhood Center with me and we’re going to be talking about using parent coaching in Early Intervention. So great to have you on the podcast today. Do you want to go ahead and just tell us a little bit about yourself? Of course, thanks, Kayla, so glad to be talking about coaching. I have worked in Early Intervention for over 25 years. My educational background is actually in early childhood education and then later I obtained an advanced degree in child development. I’ve provided direct services to children and families through Early Intervention systems in multiple states, including Washington, D.C.  And I’ve also served in several leadership roles with in different Early Intervention systems over the years. Great, we’re so happy to have you here talking about parent coaching and something that’s used in Early Intervention across the country. Katherine and I work in a team together helping the providers in our state learn more about parent coaching, so it’s a topic that we’re both very passionate about, and hopefully we’ll share some new tips and tricks with everyone listening today. When it comes to parent coaching what is one thing that you wish you knew at the start of the journey into coaching with families in Early Intervention? Well, I love the way that you use the word “journey.” I think it really and truly is a journey; it takes time. I think providers need to be patient. You really want to celebrate when things go well and then be willing to problem solve when things don’t go as planned. And then the one thing that’s really an “aha” moment for me is the importance of understanding adult learning and adult learning strategies and how important it is. So many of us come into this filed and we love babies and toddlers, but we really need to love their caregivers, and know how to interact with them. Right, that’s so important. I was talking with some other professionals too about adult learning and how that is such a big part of parent coaching. Sometimes, providers get stuck and they’re not sure how to support the parent best and so sometimes it’s really good to take a step back and look at that adult learning style. Have you found different ways to figure out a parent’s learning style that help you? Well, I think it comes down to being patient and willing to problem solve, being an active listener and really asking families what went well? I think that’s probably been some of the most basic strategies for me. I know, I think that’s one thing I’ve tried to do more too – be reflective at the end of every session. What went well that just gives us information. We always want to talk as providers I think, and so making sure, you’re right, using that active listening to really figure out how we can best support the parents that we’re working with. How do you think we can help and support parents to see the importance of being an active participant in the Early Intervention visits? I think it’s so important that we believe in all parents. All parents really do want what’s best for their children. That looks different though in all types of families. So, I think that’s important just to keep that in the back of your mind. I think messaging and reminding families – children spend more time with caregivers than they do in therapy, even intensive therapies. So, we want to help families do the math and recognize that they really can provide that intensity if they embed interventions in their everyday routines. They have the opportunity and the time – if we help them find things that are not extra. We know time is limited for families. We want things to be embedded in what’s already happening within any family unit. I also think, we know research has shown that parents and caregivers use strategies at higher rates when a coaching approach is used versus when it wasn’t. The research backs that coaching is effective. And families are more likely to retain that information and implement the strategies that they use when they’re taught in a coaching approach as apposed to a more traditional method. Have you had families that you work with, or maybe other providers we have talked about, that experience where they might have a family where they have another child and received more of that direct teaching model with the child versus a coaching model – and how do you navigate that? I think, again, that patience – I keep coming back to that – patience with yourself, patience with the change. If a family has expectations about what services should look like in Early Intervention – we want to talk about why we’re doing what we’re doing and what our intentions are and hopefully find a good match for that family. Being open and honest and having good communication with the family about your strategies – I think are important. Right, and I like how you are talking about how expectations with parents so they can make that transition into that coaching model. Because there are so many benefits. How as a provider - (for me personally, I’ve been using the coaching model for a long time. I was really lucky in that when I started working in Early Intervention, I was quickly introduced to it, so I’ve been using it for a long time. And now in Indiana we’re working on helping providers here learn how to coach) – what are you doing to help those new providers going to that parent coaching versus doing that direct teaching? I think providers have to see it working. And they need to be confident enough in their own practice to try new things and ultimately what we all want is the best outcomes for children and families. And so, like with anything else it takes time. So, once providers are able to see they are getting the outcomes they feel are important, I think providers are beginning to really be open to adopting a new model of service delivery. Very good, yea. What are some resources that you – how long have you been using the coaching model? What are some resources you have found along the way that you found are helpful? Well, probably, which is a typical experience with many providers – I felt like I was coaching families – I felt like I was coaching families for years. I had thought about not bringing in my own materials for quite some time, but I haven’t ever been trained on a specific model of coaching and here in Indiana you mentioned we’re working with training providers across the state. We have the luxury of adopting the Family-Guided Routines Based Intervention model here in Indiana and that model has so many great resources that we’ve been given access to. It has a website open for all. It gives you access to a plethora of research articles; it’s connected us to other people who are writing blogs about coaching. But I think most of all it’s given us resources to people – people who have been implementing coaching models for quite some time and understand that it takes time and understand what type of supports providers need to adopt a new practice. So, I think people are probably the biggest resource. I think we’ve – and you can speak to this, Kayla – we’ve come into contact with so many people who are open to change and growth in their practice. And we’ve also had the luxury of interacting with people who dedicated their career to coaching, as well as others who are new to the journey, and I think we are constantly learning from the people who are around. What do you think the biggest struggle providers face when they are moving from that direct teaching to more of a coaching model is? Oh, I don’t know if there’s a single one. It’s unique to each provider – where their mindset is. I liked what you said earlier where you’re talking about how many of us that went into Early Childhood, we went into it with little kids, the babies, and the toddlers and it’s been such a switch for many providers to go from being the one that’s teaching the child to coaching the parent. Absolutely, and I think here in Indiana after interacting with so many providers across the state, we have great providers here in Indiana, and I think our providers recognize that relationships matter and so we’ve seen providers put a lot of time and effort into the relationships they developed with their families and so now it’s just shifting a little bit, that focus of that relationship and remembering that adults really learn best when they’re engaged – when they have opportunities for practice. And so how do we use those relationships we’ve spent time building – to shift our practice to really engage the adults and not just the child during our sessions with families? Right, and I think in our backgrounds too a lot of times we learn that all children learn differently and with parents it’s the same. We need to find the best way to support that individual versus using just one thing, so that’s part of the journey too. What advice would you give someone who’s trying to switch their practice? They’ve had a toy bag, it’s been in the back of their trunk, their car is full of toys (I remember being in that place) to using coaching in their visits? I think self-reflection is so important. What feels the easiest is not always the best. Having the novelty of a toy bag - it makes engaging the child much easier in most cases. It boosts our sense of efficacy and efficiency really during a session. But if you really think about how that impacts a care-giver’s competence when you walk out the door and they can’t replicate anything you just did? It makes you realize that maybe that isn’t the best strategy – just because we’re comfortable, we can feel efficient and competent doesn’t mean that that’s the best method. Right, you just took me back a moment. My son was in Early Intervention for a little while and I had been working in Early Intervention and I was using a coaching model and I moved, and my son was receiving Early Intervention, and the provider was wonderful, but she would come in and she mainly played with him, and I wasn’t really involved. At the end of the session, she would generally tell me what to work on and I have to admit that despite all the knowledge I had about follow through and how important it was – I found myself forgetting completely what happened until she showed up the next week. So, I wonder myself, I was never in the position of a family receiving it and the parent coaching, but had I been more involved would I have done a better job with follow through? Just from that parent’s perspective, that tends to be one of the common struggles that providers have in Early Intervention. They feel so invested and they wonder why they’re not getting that follow through. I think, again, some of that self-reflection, really reflect on what can we as providers do to own that change and not put it on the family, that will find maybe some of our strategies can be adjusted that will lead to more parent engagement, like you’re saying. What is one myth you’d like to debunk about using coaching in Early Intervention? I think that one common myth would be that expectation of coaching means that you can’t interact with the child. In fact, a lot of coaching strategies, one of the ones that we’ve learned, model that we’re using – demonstration with narration – it requires just that. You’re going to interact with the child. The key difference is that you’re not assuming the caregiver is absorbing all that information just by watching you, the expert. You’re narrating what you’re doing and then turning it over to the caregiver while you’re still there because you want to make sure that the strategies that you’re using are also working for the people that care for the child on a regular basis. Is there anything that, when you’re thinking about parent coaching, that I didn’t ask you a question about – that you just want to put out to the universe? That’s a big one. I would just say, be open to change. I think all of us as providers – just like families want what’s best for their children – we’re all in this field because we want what’s best for children and families. Being open to change and growth is important and with that kind of growth mind-set we can really get there for children and families. Thank you so much for joining me today, Katherine, to chat about parent coaching in Early Intervention podcasts. Thanks for having me, it’s been fun to talk about coaching and I hope you’ll have me back. Awesome, thank you to everyone listening today on Early Childhood On-the-Go podcast and we hope to have you join us again soon. Thanks for listening to the Early Childhood On-the-Go podcast from the Early Childhood Center team at Indiana University. Learn more at IIDC.Indiana.edu/ecc.