PiCs: Telepractice coaching for a parent of a child who is hard-of-hearing

ABSTRACT

Services for families of young children with low-incidence disabilities (e.g. deaf/hard-of-hearing, DHH) are expensive to deliver and may not be available in all geographic regions. Parents of children who are DHH may be taught and coached to implement strategies to encourage communication. The purpose of this single-case multiple-baseline design study was to implement and assess telepractice teaching and coaching of a parent whose child is hard-of-hearing. The parent was taught to implement naturalistic teaching strategies for communication using the Parent-implemented Communication Strategies (PiCS) protocols (Meadan, H., Angell, M. E., Stoner, J. B., & Daczewitz, M. E. (2014). Parent-implemented social-pragmatic communication intervention: A pilot study. Focus on Autism and other Developmental Disabilities, 29, 1–16. doi:10.1177/1088357613517504). Results varied across strategies, and the parent expressed satisfaction with the goals, procedures, and outcomes of the intervention. Implications include recommendations for practitioners and researchers.

KEYWORDS:

• Parent Collaboration
• early intervention
• telepractice
• communication strategies
• hard-of-hearing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Marcus Daczewitz is an assistant professor at Pittsburg State University. His areas of interest include inclusive education, social-communication skills, language and literacy interventions for children with disabilities, and family empowerment in education.

Hedda Meadan is an Associate Professor at the Department of Special Education at the University of Illinois. She is a Goldstick Family Scholar, a University Scholar, and a Board Certified Behaviour Analyst. Dr. Meadan’s areas of interest include social-communication skills and challenging behaviour of children with disabilities and intervention methods to enhance these spheres of functioning.

Christy Borders is a leader in addressing the needs of students who are deaf/hard of hearing (D/HH) with additional disabilities, particularly autism spectrum disorders (ASD). She has spent considerable time identifying gaps in literature and potential interventions for use with this population of students. Christy’s research stems from personal classroom and clinical experiences that involved this particular population. She has extensive academic and clinical experience and training in serving students who D/HH and those with ASD. Her undergraduate and graduate degrees both focused on education of D/HH students. In addition, Christy has over 10 years of clinical, classroom, and administrative experience working with individuals with disabilities. She furthered her academic and research skills and experiences through doctoral studies in the area of special education in order to attain additional strategies for D/HH students who have comorbid disabilities. Dr. Borders’ research has focused on the interventions teachers of the deaf utilise with this population and differences in educational services with the presence of an additional disability. She has been sought out for input on this topic for webinars, newsletters, invited journal articles, and collaborative research.

ORCID

Marcus Daczewitz https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9571-3983

Christy Borders http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1512-1457

Hedda Meadan http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7098-6176