It is felt that an important part of this process is the family since that is where the child spends the majority of their time. The family situation and the experiences that are provided to the child within this situation are critical to a child's development (Bruder, 2000). Physical Therapy is one type of early intervention that is often used with disabled children. The idea of family-centered care brings many wonderful things to the practice of pediatric physical therapy. Physical therapy is the profession of developing, maintaining and restoring maximum movement and function to a patient. Treatments often focus on improving gross and fine motor skills, balance and coordination, strength and endurance as well as cognitive and sensory processing. For a child with a disability all of these practices are things that they need to work on and improve in order to be able to grow up and care for themselves. This is what makes family-centered care so important. Since most of a child's time is spent with the family...

Having the family involved in physical therapy treatment allows the family to help reinforce things that are learned during PT sessions. It also allows them to give feedback to the therapists about what and how the child is doing at home in their own environment. Intervention plans are almost always a work in progress and always need to be modified as the child improves and accomplishes things that they couldn't in the past.
References

Bruder, Mary Beth. (2000). Family-Centered Early Intervention: Clarifying Our Values for the New Millennium. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education. 20(2). p.105-115.

****Johnson, Beverly H. (1999). Family-Centered Care: Creating Partnerships in Health. Group Practice Journal. p. 18-21.

****- This citation needs the journal number and volume number in order to be complete…..it wasn't on the article itself and I couldn't locate it anywhere.