Evaluating a Rapid Coaching Intervention Delivered Remotely to Families

Abstract

Families are central to promoting communication in young children with disabilities with complex communication needs. Providing coaching on naturalistic language interventions (NLI) gives parents tools for independently intervening on communication across activities in the home. Both parents and professionals have limited resources, which requires maximizing parent and professional interactions when meeting. A rapid coaching intervention delivered via distance technology is one approach for addressing this issue. In this study, a multiple baseline across behaviors design replicated across participants was used to evaluate a rapid coaching intervention with parents. When the intervention was introduced, parents displayed improvements in naturalistic strategies and procedures. Child-level expressive communication was measured within the context of the designs, and data were variable. Improvements in the complexity of speech and responding to parents were observed. Implications are provided for future studies.