Written by Julie Higginbotham, Senior Case Coordinator, Mecklenburg County CDSA
I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about how we do our work as early interventionists. It’s so interesting to me to think about how we all got into this field to begin with, and we’re all in different places when it comes to how we provide services to children and families. That being said, we’re all heading in the same direction when it comes to using best practices. We’ve been thinking here at EI Excellence about our role and responsibility in supporting that process, so we decided that we needed to get some more information from anyone who is using EI Excellence as a tool in that journey.
We don’t tend to see very many comments on here (stay tuned for my “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” moment coming in a minute). We would love to know what you all are really thinking about as you work on your own practices. While this is good for you to talk about in general so you can access resources to help you do those things, we seriously want to know what you need so we can find ways to put it out there for you, both on EI Excellence as a general place to support the evidence, as well as in this Coach2Go blog to give you more of the practical function of that information in your day-to-day work. So, here are two questions for you to consider….and hopefully leave a comment about….
1. When you hear the term “evidence-based practices,” what evidence comes to mind that supports early intervention services? If you don’t know, THAT’S OK! Say that out loud – by asking about the evidence that supports certain practices, we can provide some more guidance and resources to give you a better idea of what we’re talking about.
2. When you think about your specific discipline, how does your perspective match best practices discussed on this site and out in the field? Taking that a step further, what conflicts with your perspective? Talk about the things that don’t line up to help figure out what information you need, and let me tell you, there’s a lot of it available!!
Here’s the thing – it’s sometimes uncomfortable to talk as professionals about the things we don’t know, maybe because we’re unsure of whether or not people might question our abilities. To me, though, there’s a wonderful courtesy that we can afford each other in supporting our own learning needs because we’re all in this boat together. We allow that for families, right? So, how can we to do the same for each other?
We really do want to hear from you, whether it’s about this or any other topic you’d like to discuss! We’re in the process of updating information throughout EI Excellence to make it more user-friendly and to keep us current, and we want to be really intentional in supporting all of you who follow us, wherever you may be around the world. Yes, I said around the world – cool, right? So, take a minute and leave us a comment. You can also comment on Facebook and Twitter, or send us an email at info@eiexcellence.org – we’ll be listening, so say stuff out loud!! It’s easy to get swallowed up in the vast sea of information, so get specific if you can so we can do the same in return. After all, isn’t that how we get to the bottom of families’ priorities and concerns? What are yours?
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