Abstract:
Effective, sustainable and versatile Early Childhood Intervention (ECI) requires collaborative
problem-solving between parents as help-seekers and professionals as help-givers during
assessment, to facilitate treatment planning based on mutual understanding of parents
problems and needs. However, international and South African research reflect parent
dissatisfaction and poor participation in ECI programmes for young children with disabilities,
which indicates a breakdown in the collaborative problem solving process. The field of ECI
confronts the problem by training professionals as help-givers, but does not do the same for
parents as help-seekers. This study drew from the field of psychology and innovatively used
the first two stages of social problem-solving, namely, problem orientation and problem
definition to conceptualise help-seeking in Early Childhood Communication Intervention
(ECCI). The study developed and tested a parent training programme to facilitate parents
orientation to and definition of problems experienced in parenting young children (0-6 years)
with moderate to severe communication disabilities. A quasi-experimental non-equivalent
groups pre-test-post-test control group design was used to implement 16 hours of training with
34 parents (i.e. 15 in the experimental group and 19 in the control group). Between-group and
within-group analyses revealed that training had a statistically significant effect on parents
problem orientations regarding initial and maintaining attributions of children s established
disabilities, confidence in seeking help from family and friends, and appraising problems as
challenges. Training effects were even greater for problem definition with parents showing
moderately good skills in providing relevant information in an organized format, thereby
facilitating intervention planning. Theoretical and clinical implications of the findings are
discussed.
