Practicum in Early Intervention with Children and Families from CLD Backgrounds

This course provides candidates with supervised experience in team-oriented early interventions with infants and toddlers with disabilities or at risk for developmental delays and their families from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds. It integrates learned theoretical models to real-life situations, and affords candidates opportunities for supervised practice in the Individualized Family Support Plan (IFSP) and/or Individualized Education Program (IEP) process. Candidates will also participate in the planning and implementation of intervention strategies for infants (0-3) and young children with special needs. Collaborative work will include working with families and other early intervention and special education professionals. Particular emphasis is given to experiences that help increase candidates’ observation, assessment and intervention planning skills that are culturally sensitive towards the unique needs of families with infants and young children with special needs. Candidates will receive individualized supervision and ongoing group support to enhance their understanding of how to apply evidence based and culturally responsive early intervention and special education services to young bi/multilingual children with disabilities, and their families. All candidates are paired with experienced early intervention professionals and will work alongside these clinicians for the semester. Candidates will spend roughly 20 hours each week in the field with these clinicians as they provide home based services to a number of families. All activities will take place in collaboration with and under supervision of candidates’ supervising EI providers.This course includes some online content as well as face-to-face group seminars. Candidates are expected to actively engage in all aspects of the course. The course instructor will observe each candidate at least three times during the semester.

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