Early Intervention and Treatment Acceptability

Abstract

Family members who interact with early interventionists do so within a context of particular social, cultural, systemic, and developmental variables. To serve families optimally, early interventionists need to grasp the breadth and depth of these variables, because they may influence the receptivity of family members to our professional recommendations. The aim of the present article is to illuminate issues related to the topic of treatment acceptability by applying concepts pertaining to collaboration, cultural difference, compliance and freedom of choice, family life cycles, and systems theory. The heuristic value of research procedures for obtaining informed consent from parents and children also is recognized. A paradigm is presented for designing home-based intervention plans with families of preschoolers with behavior disorders, and an illustrative case is presented.