EARLY INTERVENTION

OF INFANTS AND
TODDLERS
BY: EVELYN F. CORTEZ
 Early Intervention
• helps keep children on a path by making the
most of their abilities and skills developed
during the early years.
• Early intervention services also support the
parents and siblings of children with special
needs.
Families often experience frustration, stress,
disappointment, and helplessness.
 • Early intervention helps young kids work
towards meeting developmental milestones.
• Infants and toddlers may qualify for help if
they have developmental delays or specific
health conditions.
• To find out if kids are eligible, they have to
be evaluated.
There are lots of skills that develop in the first
three years of a child’s life. Some infants and
toddlers meet developmental milestones more
slowly than expected. This is called
developmental delay. Early interven -tion can
help infants and toddlers with delays catch up
in their development.
 What are early intervention services?
It is more about special education, the
services and supports that help some kids
make progress in school.
 There is a law that makes sure there’s a help
available for younger kids and their families is
called the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act (IDEA).
Early intervention is like special education for
school – age kids , but it’s for eligible infants
and toddlers.
It gives them the support they need to make
progress in life skills.
There are also services for families who care
for them.
Early intervention focuses on skills in these
five areas.
Physical skills (reaching, crawling, walking,
drawing, building)
Cognitive skills (thinking, learning, solving
problems)
Communication skills (talking, listening,
understanding and others)
Self - help or adaptive skills (eating, dressing)
Social or emotional skills (playing, interacting
with others)
 The states receive IDEA funds for early
intervention services must serve all infants and
toddlers with developmental delays, or
established risk conditions and also those
infants and toddlers who fall under two types
of documented risk, biological and
environmental.
 A. Developmental delays are significant
delays or atypical patterns of development that
make children eligible for early intervention.
B. Established risk conditions include
diagnosed physical or medical
conditions that almost always result in
developmental delay or disability.
 Examples: Down syndrome, fragile
X syndrome, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder
(FASD), brain or spinal cord damage, sensory
impairments, and
maternal acquired immune deficiency
syndrome (AIDS).
C. Biological risk conditions include pediatric
histories or current biological
conditions (e.g., significantly
premature birth, low birth weight) that result
in a greater than usual probability of
developmental delay or disability.
 D. Environmental risk conditions include
factors such as extreme poverty, parental
substance abuse, homelessness, abuse or
neglect, and parental intellectual impairment,
which are associated with a higher than normal
probability of developmental delay.
 Through early intervention, babies and
toddlers can get services at home or in the
community. Different types of specialists work
with kids depending on which skills are
delayed. Getting services early helps many
kids catch up and thrive in school and in life
overall.