Home Visiting Model

The Home- and Community-Based Early Intervention
program follows practices described in the recently published book, Routines-Based Early Intervention: Supporting Young Children and Their Families by Robin McWilliam, Ph.D. The book is one of the first comprehensive approaches to early intervention using recommended and evidence-based practices. 

Dr. McWilliam's approach strongly supports "caregiver"-delivered interventions versus strictly "professional"-delivered interventions. In the professional-delivered approach, children receive one or two hours of service a week from the professional, and that's where the intervention ends. The caregiver-delivered approach is based on the fact that very young children do not learn in "lessons" or "sessions." Instead, they learn throughout every day. Therefore, if professionals teach parents or other caregivers how to work with their child, the child can receive significant daily intervention.

The Routines-Based Early Intervention approach or components of the approach are used in many places across the United States and, to some extent, overseas, including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Germany, and Portugal. In Portugal, the national early intervention association (ANIP) is training the whole country in all five components of the model. In the United States, components of the model have been adopted as states are retreating from the multidisciplinary, fee-for-service, child-centered approach that pervaded systems beginning in the 1990s.

For the past three summers, early intervention experts from across the country and some from overseas have been trained at the Routines-Based Interview Certification Institute, led by Dr. McWilliam. 

Consultation, Training and Technical Assistance Opportunities

Siskin Children's Institute seeks to affirm the dignity and worth of every person. It is, therefore, the policy of the Institute to practice and ensure the fair and equitable treatment of all constituents with respect to race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, political belief, socio-economic status, age, gender, sexual orientation, or disability. The Institute promotes the full realization of this policy through all organizational practices including admission and participation in programs and services.