The Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP), is designed to offer a holistic family-centered approach to meet the needs of families with children with disabilities between the ages of 0 to 3 years old. The goal is to help support the family, and provide services that are specific to the child's special needs in order to facilitate the child's growth and development. Therefore, this is a very complex and comprehensive program that tries to help meet the needs of the child and family simultaneously. The goal of this study was to explore parents' perceptions of the IFSP based on their experiences with the program. Twenty-one parents representing fourteen families of young children with disabilities, or experiencing developmental delays, who were either currently on, or have been part of an IFSP within the past 2 years, participated in this study. Qualitative research methods using a phenomenological design of in-depth interviews, together with follow-up interviews and a focus group were used in conducting this study. The results of this study revealed two categories of service coordination, and family experience and perspective, as the source of origination of themes and critical issues that the parents had highlighted. The themes included: the role of the caseworker; IFSP coordination; transition from IFSP to IEP; family services; family involvement; diversity issues; parents in multiple roles; networking; occupational influence; personal growth in parents; meaning and life lessons; and fathers' involvement. The critical issues included: home-based services; teamwork; advocacy; free services; flexibility; and assessment issues. Parents had expressed both positive and negative reflections related to both the themes and critical issues. Parents' reflections highlighted the significance of these results to the importance of understanding and improving of the IFSP. Implications for future research, policy development and professional practice are addressed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-1981 |
| Date | 01 January 2001 |
| Creators | Lalbeharie-Josias, Desiree Phoebe |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest |
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