Family - Centered Care/Intervention? Family-Centered

¶ … family - centered care/Intervention?

Family-centered care is the ideas of involving the family as much as possible into a patients care. This approach is grounded in mutually respectful partnerships between patients, families and healthcare providers. Early examples of family-centered care included having fathers in the delivery room or having a parent stay overnight with a hospitalized child. Recently newer models of care have been introduced that revolve around this same concept. These include: relationship-centered care, patient-centered care, the Planetree Mode and mind-body care (Johnson, 1999).

The emphasis in all of these models is communication and relationships. This consists of promoting patient information and support along with welcoming patient and family member involvement in the care team. The unique characteristic of family-centered care is that of collaboration beyond the clinical level. This process makes it possible to create advisory roles for patients and families in policy program development. This is based on the conviction that patients and families can contribute valuable insights into creating and improving the overall system of care, making it better for everyone involved (Johnson, 1999).

2. Why is family centered care important for children with disabilities and their families?

Children with disabilities often have needs that other children their age do not. Family-centered care is very important in their care because it gets the entire family involved in their care. And because children with disabilities are often hard to care for the type of approach helps to support the family in delivering care. Very often these children require early intervention in order to help them. Family-centered early intervention is seen as the best because it focuses on three important values. 1) It has an emphasis on families' strengths and not their weaknesses, 2) it promotes family choice and control over available resources and 3) it centers on the development of a collaborative relationship between the professionals and the parents. The family unit is considered to be an integral part of successful early intervention (Bruder, 2000).

3. What does family centered care/intervention bring to the practice of pediatric physical therapy?

The concept of early intervention is based on the idea that interventions should be aimed at minimizing the impact of a child's delay or disability and helping to promote their competence. 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).