Home programming/referrals

Home programming is an important part of the delivery of your service, but also challenging, as the therapist needs to meet the needs of different families.

Some suggestions for successful home programming include (1,2):

• Remember the parents' goals as first priority. Take time to set goals in conjunction with the family.
• Coordinate ideas as a team if possible. This will help with prioritisation and minimize number of ideas presented
• Partnership programs work better than traditional therapist led programs. Your aim is to provide guidance for a way of life and develop parents' confidence about choosing ideas for the infant. Ideal is for the therapist to teach the parent how to coach the child.
• Provide a library of ideas for parents to generalise across the day.
• Encourage the parent to use their knowledge about their baby to choose activities that are motivating and are more likely to be initiated and repeated.
• Coaching the parent to understand the mastery and motivation cycle so they can provide the right amount of support to ensure success and challenge abilities
• Pictures or video taken on phone can help with understanding.
• Enrichment of the environment: talking about implementing ideas in a number of different ways, with different toys and activities and in a responsive, attuned manner.
• Home visiting where possible

Discuss ways of building recommendations into the family's typical daily life (e.g. visual tracking during nappy change time, working on “more” games when feeding solids, imitation of noises in the car while driving).