Diane Bricker

The challenge of inclusion

The integration or inclusion of young children with disabilities into public school and community-based educational and child care programs is a topic of importance to the range of personnel working in early intervention/early childhood special education. This paper takes the position that many of these personnel embrace inclusion at the conceptual level but ignore or discount its implications at the applied or child level. A discussion of the policies and practices of inclusion as they may potentially affect individual children and families serves as a basis for offering a series of recommendations for fostering successful inclusion.

Identification of social-emotional problems in young children using a parent-completed screening measure☆

Abstract The early identification of social and emotional problems in infants, toddlers, and young children is critical for improving developmental outcomes. The Ages and Stages Questionnaires: Social-Emotional, a newly-developed screening tool, is described in this article. Questionnaires span the 3- to 63-month period with 8 separate assessment intervals. Research findings, including data on 3014 questionnaires, are reported. Internal consistency was generally high, with an overall alpha of 0.82. Test-retest reliability between parents’ classifications was 0.94. Sensitivity ranged from 0.75 to 0.89 with 0.82 overall sensitivity; specificity ranged from 0.82 to 0.96 with 0.92 overall specificity. Parents reported easy understanding and high satisfaction with the questionnaires.

Inclusion: How the Scene Has Changed.

One of the first early intervention programs developed in the 1970s at Peabody College used an inclusive approach by combining infants, toddlers, and preschool-age children with and without disabil...One of the first early intervention programs developed in the 1970s at Peabody College used an inclusive approach by combining infants, toddlers, and preschool-age children with and without disabilities. The first section of this article reviews three salient issues faced by the staff of this early program: recruitment of children, delivery of developmentally appropriate services, and relative lack of barriers to inclusion. In the second section, successes of this early program are juxtaposed with issues faced by contemporary early intervention approaches to inclusion. The final section suggests a refocusing of inclusion efforts in three areas: assuring that inclusion benefits all children and families, improving understanding of which strategies and procedures work and which do not, and improving the clarity of outcomes for individual children who participate in inclusion programs.

Parent-completed developmental questionnaires: Effectiveness with low and middle income parents

The Ages & Stages Questionnaires (ASQ) are a series of parent-completed questionnaires designed to screen the developmental performance of children from 4 through 48 months of age. This study examined the use of the ASQ with parents from low and middle income backgrounds. Ninety-six parents completed the ASQ on their child from 4 through 30 months. Percent agreement between questionnaires completed by parents in the low income sample (N= 54) and a professionally-administered standardized assessment ranged from .80–.91 (X = .85); percent agreement for questionnaires completed by parents in the middle income sample (N = 42) ranged from .85–.93 (X = .89). In this longitudinal study, both middle and low income parents appeared able to complete developmental questionnaires with reasonable accuracy.

The Effectiveness of Parental Screening of At-Risk Infants The Infant Monitoring Questionnaires

This study examined the validity, reliability, and cost of a parent-completed screening system called the Infant Monitoring Questionnaires. This system relies on parents to complete developmental questionnaires on their at-risk infants at specific time intervals. The present work replicated and extended a previous study of the questionnaires. The primary analyses included determining (a) the agreement between the infants classification based on the parent-completed questionnaire and a criterion measure (e.g., Bayley Scales of Infant Development, Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test, Revised Gesell Developmental Schedules); (b) interobserver and test-retest reliability of the questionnaires; and (c) the cost of the questionnaire system. The results indicated that percentage agreement between classifications of infants made using the standardized tests and the questionnaires was high, ranging from 86% to 91%. Underscreening rates were low, ranging from zero to 6%; overscreening rates were also low, ranging from 3% to 11%. Interobserver and test-retest agreement were very high. At a cost of about

Mental Health Screening in Young Children

2.50 per questionnaire, the screening system provides an economical and flexible means of screening at-risk infants while at the same time involving parents in the assessment process.

Use of parent-completed developmental questionnaires for child-find and screening

The numbers of young children who display mental health problems are on the rise. Recent surveys suggest that anywhere from 10% to 25% of young children may have mild to serious social-emotional disorders. In populations of children with disabilities and children at risk the probability of having significant mental health problems is even greater. Accumulating evidence suggests that when left untreated, mental health problems in very young children can grow in severity and require costly, long-term intervention that may or may not be successful. Evidence also suggests that a more effective and less costly approach is prevention and early identification and intervention. The development and establishment of prevention and early identification strategies has been inhibited by a number of serious barriers. However, the advent of family friendly first-level screening measures now permits the establishment of effective and economical early screening programs. Early screening programs are enhanced if they are linked directly to other critical services such as eligibility determination, intervention, and evaluation.

Intervention and evaluation

States are currently developing child-find and screening systems for implementation of Public Law 99-457. The use of parent-completed developmental questionnaires is a promising strategy for these systems. The advantages of involving parents in the developmental assessment of their infants and children are reviewed here, and guidelines for eliciting valid and reliable information from parents are outlined. Current tools are reviewed, and examples of their implementation in child-find and screening programs are described.

Developmental integration of preschool children

David Littman, PhD Research Scientist Center on Human Development University of Oregon Eugene, Oregon EVALUATION is essential for effective intervention. The assessment of individual change and programmatic impact requires that intervention methods and systems be undergirded with procedures that are appropriate for evaluating their efficacy. Evaluation should determine the format and success of intervention for individual children and assess the impact of programs on groups of children. Evaluation serves three distinct but complementary functions: 1. It guides development of individual programming. 2. It provides feedback about success of individual programming. 3. It provides a system for determining the value of an intervention system designed to benefit groups of children.

The Natural Environment: A Useful Construct?.

Abstract The present investigation examined the effects of integrating handicapped and non-handicapped preschool children and toddlers in three different classrooms. Each child was assessed in the Fall and Spring with norm-referenced (Bayler or McCarthy Scales) and criterion-referenced (Oregon Student Progress Record and Uniform Performance Assessment System) instruments. Additionally, an index of the educational significance of the progress made by the children in each classroom was calculated. The results indicated that statistically and educationally significant gains were made in all criterion referenced test scores and norm-referenced scores, except for the McCarthy GCIs in one preschool classroom. Developmental integration appears to be an effective means for the education of both handicapped and non-handicapped preschool children.