Family-Centered Early Intervention Program for High-Risk Infants

Todays, technological advancements and the improvement of medical and healthcare services have led to more survival of high-risk newborns. Lack of development and maturity of the central nervous system of these high-risk infants result in low birth weight and/or prematurity. Then, they might be at the risk of some neurodevelopment problems including motor, sensory processing, cognitive and perceptual skills. Early interventions are timely measures focusing on high-risk infants or their families, used to improve functional and developmental abilities and reduce the complications of preterm birth and promote their health. There are various interventional approaches in rehabilitation of these infants. One of the most effective and cost-efficient ways of providing early intervention services especially in poor sociocultural contexts is family-centered program. Designing an interventional protocol that can be easier to understand and follow by parents with simple sensory and interactional plays adjusted to corrected age and developmental status of premature infants is more useful and beneficial to these infants, families and also the service providers. In these protocols, the family plays a key role in the assessment of resources, priorities, and concerns in conjunction with a care coordinator. Moreover, the therapist could be able to train parents the safe and accurate sensory motor stimulations, cognitive skills, adapting the environment and interaction,communications skills through play and make a good and early attachment of infant and his/her parents. Implementation of these protocols not only improve the infant’s development but also can additionally decrease stresses and feeling of frustration and anxiety of parents and increase their self-confidence as well as self-efficacy, improve their involvement and the parenting role. In this article, the researcher introduces a protocol focused on the sensory-motor plays taught to parents or caregiver. At the first, the therapist assesses the neurodevelopmental abilities ofthe infants (Muscle tone, reflexes, developmental stages and skills, state of arousal), the sensory processing (visual, auditory, tactile, vestibular and proprioceptive) and provide with parents some consultations related to the assessment results. The modality of all sensory stimulation is sensory-motor plays (sand, water, CP ball, swing, barrel, bells, Xylophone, flashlight, paste and so on). Moreover, the therapist trains parents some massage (Exteroceptive and proprioceptive stimulations) and developmental plays in each developmental milestone to improve cognitive and motor development. During play, the infant can interact with and attend to people and environment, experience and take more sensory input which facilitates neural connections and more brain myelination. All developmental skills (fine and gross motor, cognitive, sensory, perceptual, communication and interaction skills) should be assessed and included in this interventional protocol to improve all aspects of infant’s development as a holistic early intervention program. This protocol is individualized follow-up and consultation program holding every two weeks after discharge to 12 months of corrected age and then it changes according to the developmental status of each infant and family

کلیدواژه ها:

Prematurity ، Early intervention ، Family-centered services ، Sensory stimulation