Early intervention: practices and representations

Abstract

In order to know the practices of Early Intervention professionals and analyze the extent to which these practices are consistent with the representations of the families it was carried out this study with the participation of an Early Intervention professional and the mother of a child who benefits from the services provided by the same professional. It is a qualitative study of a comprehensive and interpretative nature. It was used as data collection instrument the semi-structured interview. The main results show that the practices of early intervention professionals don't distance themselves from representations of families over these practices. It can be said, from the discourse of the practices and representations, that we are dealing with an experienced E.I. professional with appropriate training that takes in her practice: knowledge, know -how and know how to be; she focuses her action in the family with everything that this implies and she is aware of the difficulties related to the Early Intervention. The results are congruent with that stipulated by Portuguese legislation for early intervention professionals. The communication between the professional and the family is preferably informal and in the speeches of the participants is not evident the existence of specific moments for tasks of monitoring and joint evaluation of the Individual plan of Early Intervention.