This national survey sought to determine which service providers work with young children with visual impairments, characteristics of the children served, provider roles and responsibilities, and the professional competencies they consider important. Findings emphasized the need for knowledge about and competence in cultural and linguistic…

Intended for parents of infants and preschoolers with visual impairments, this booklet encourages parent involvement in all aspects of educational programming for their children and provides guidelines for selection of a suitable program. The first section examines the stresses involved during transitions from one program to another. Parents are…

This 37-minute videotape recording demonstrates selected interventions to assist infants and toddlers with multiple disabilities, including vision and hearing loss, in developing early communication and other skills. Emphasizing the critical importance of early intervention, the video is designed to help service providers and families create…

This videotape explains common vision tests used with infants with multiple disabilities, shows how to gather information from parents on their children's use of vision, and demonstrates selected early intervention strategies for encouraging infants and young children with multiple disabilities to use their vision in functional ways. The videotape…

This final report describes the activities and outcomes of Promoting Learning through Active Interactions, a research-to-practice 4-year project that developed, implemented, and validated a five-module curriculum with 25 infants (ages 6-30 months) who are deaf-blind, their parents, and early interventionists. The project had the following…

This manual documents key program development strategies and inservice training topics provided by the Model Demonstration Early Intervention Network Project. This project focused on building the capacity of early intervention programs to serve infants who are deaf-blind and their families. The first section covers program development and includes…

In this report, shifts underway in early intervention (EI) from a professional-centered to a more family-centered model of service delivery are documented. The demographic changes in the past decade of young children and families receiving EI services (e.g., teen parents, children with more complex developmental and medical needs), in addition to…

This report identifies key issues for providing early childhood special education services to young children who are visually impaired and for working with families of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. First, it discusses the incidence of visual impairment and associated disabilities among young children, the process of early…