How Do Administrators of New York City Early Intervention Programs Conceptualize and Implement Family-Centered Care?
type: CreativeWork
description: Family-centered care, the mandated delivery approach outlined under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Part C, is considered best practice in providing services to families with children under three with special needs. It has been shown to benefit children and families through numerous positive outcomes. Yet, family-centered care is not implemented in all programs universally, and significant variation exists in how programs deliver family-centered services, to the detriment of families. Much of that variation can be attributed to programmatic leadership, as administrators establish the philosophy, policies, practices, and organizational climate of an agency. This project intended to build on the limited research regarding the role administrators have in delivering family-centered Part C services by exploring administrators’ definition and viewed purpose of family-centered care, identified challenges to providing family-centered services, ways the obstacles were negotiated, and how those factors impacted the implementation of family-centered programming. In this qualitative case study, 21 administrators of New York City Part C programs anonymously completed a web-based questionnaire that was used to elicit narrative and demographic data. The data were examined using Creswell’s (2003, 2008) six stages of qualitative data analysis and descriptive statistics. The results reaffirmed previous research (Mandell & Murray, 2009), which found that how administrators conceptualize family-centered care reflects how it is implemented in programs. This demonstrates the influential role administrators have in the delivery of family-centered services. The data revealed New York City Part C administrators conceptualized family-centered care as a means of including and engaging families in programming to teach families intervention strategies to carry over into the child’s natural environment for the benefit of the child. The categories of practices that were least fre…
abstract: Family-centered care, the mandated delivery approach outlined under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Part C, is considered best practice in providing services to families with children under three with special needs. It has been shown to benefit children and families through numerous positive outcomes. Yet, family-centered care is not implemented in all programs universally, and significant variation exists in how programs deliver family-centered services, to the detriment of families. Much of that variation can be attributed to programmatic leadership, as administrators establish the philosophy, policies, practices, and organizational climate of an agency. This project intended to build on the limited research regarding the role administrators have in delivering family-centered Part C services by exploring administrators’ definition and viewed purpose of family-centered care, identified challenges to providing family-centered services, ways the obstacles were negotiated, and how those factors impacted the implementation of family-centered programming. In this qualitative case study, 21 administrators of New York City Part C programs anonymously completed a web-based questionnaire that was used to elicit narrative and demographic data. The data were examined using Creswell’s (2003, 2008) six stages of qualitative data analysis and descriptive statistics. The results reaffirmed previous research (Mandell & Murray, 2009), which found that how administrators conceptualize family-centered care reflects how it is implemented in programs. This demonstrates the influential role administrators have in the delivery of family-centered services. The data revealed New York City Part C administrators conceptualized family-centered care as a means of including and engaging families in programming to teach families intervention strategies to carry over into the child’s natural environment for the benefit of the child. The categories of practices that were least fre…
author: Longley, Jennifer M.
keywords: Early Intervention, Family-centered care, Part C services, Administrators, Parent-professional partnership, Service delivery, Education, Educational Administration and Supervision, Educational Leadership, Pre-Elementary, Early Childhood, Kindergarten Teacher Education, Special Education Administration
date published: 2014-12-10T08:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T04:32:52Z
provider: Seton Hall University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Seton Hall University