PlayConnections: Relationship-focussed Early Childhood Intervention Training for Allied Health Practitioners

ABSTRACT

The ability of parents to read children’s cues and respond sensitively underpins the effectiveness of early interventions. Allied health practitioners, however, typically spend little time focussing on parent–child interactions in early childhood intervention. A 1-day training event: ‘PlayConnections’ was developed to support practitioners to adopt a relationship focus. Allied health practitioners (N = 137) from a range of intervention settings across Queensland, Australia, attended one of five 1-day training events. A concurrent mixed-methods research design was used. Using a purpose-designed knowledge and participant perception survey, data was collected at three time points: pre-, post-, and 3–6 months after training. Significant changes (p < .001) were found pre-post training in participant knowledge of a relationship-focussed approach. These improvements were maintained at follow-up (p < .001). Exploratory factor analysis revealed three participant perception subscales: perceptions of their therapy skills, comfort with emotions, and understanding of a relationship-focussed approach. All revealed significant improvements (p < .001) across the three time periods. Qualitative analysis of free-text data from the follow-up stage revealed three main themes: 1) changes in practice; 2) enhanced observations; and 3) practice challenges. While participants reported many benefits of applying training principles, they also perceived some barriers to effective implementation of a relationship-based approach.

KEYWORDS:

• Developmental delays
• early intervention
• parenting
• relationship-based approach
• training

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Acknowledgments

The first author, Jacqueline Barfoot, is a recipient of a University of Queensland Research Higher Degree Scholarship.

Disclosure Statement

The authors report no conflict of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.

Supplementary Material

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