Participation-Focused Strategy Use Among Caregivers of Children Receiving Early Intervention

Importance: Evidence on common types of participation-focused caregiver strategies can help occupational therapy practitioners to take an evidence-based approach to designing participation-focused practice. Objective: To identify and explore types of caregiver strategies to support young children’s participation in valued occupations in the home and community. Design: Qualitative study using a subset of data collected online with the Young Children’s Participation and Environment Measure (YC–PEM). Narrative responses about strategy use were content coded to the family of Participation-Related Constructs (fPRC) framework using a deductive analytic approach to identify relevant types of participation-focused strategies used in the home and community. Responses were further analyzed within each relevant fPRC construct using an inductive analytic approach to identify the scope of strategies used for each construct. Setting: Early intervention. Participants: Caregivers (N = 106) of young children receiving early intervention. Outcomes and Measures: Caregivers’ strategies to support their child’s home and community participation, provided by the YC–PEM. Results: Caregivers most commonly adapted the child’s environment or context to support their child’s home and community participation (45.06%). The least common focus of caregiver strategies was the child’s activity competencies (11.16%). Three or more types of caregiver strategies were identified for each participation-related construct. Conclusion and Relevance: Results indicated that caregivers used a range of strategies related to each of the participation-related constructs to support their child’s participation in home and community occupations, most commonly targeting the environment. Occupational therapy practitioners can select from this range of strategies when planning participation-focused early intervention with families. What This Article Adds: This study yields new evidence on the scope of caregiver strategy use to support young children’s participation in home and community occupations. Occupational therapy practitioners can apply this evidence to anticipate common areas of caregiver strategy use in participation-focused practice with families in early intervention.