The Key Worker: Resources for Early Childhood Intervention Professionals

In 2012, Dr Stacey Alexander and Noah's Ark CEO John Forster published this resource on the Key Worker, with information that is still relevant and in use today.

The resource was developed to support Early Childhood Intervention (ECI) professionals to reflect on the relationships they develop with families, particularly as they visit families at home.

Read Dr Tim Moore's introduction below, and download the PDF for free on the ResearchGate website.

Foreword

Parenting a young child with developmental disabilities can be very challenging, especially in the early stages. Parents have to make sense of a new and complex world of disability and health issues, and learn to negotiate a new world of services, professionals and appointments. They have to do this while dealing with their own feelings of sadness, and working out how their own needs, and those of their family, can be met. All of this can be emotionally and physically stressful.

The more health or development problems a child has, the more services they receive and the more professionals they have to deal with. And the more services and professionals there are, the less likely it is that the overall service they receive will be well-coordinated or family-centered. Managing these competing demands is a particular source of stress for many families.

What can Early Childhood Intervention (ECI) services do to help?

One of the great ethical precepts for human services is ‘Do no harm’. This is based on the recognition that, despite the best intentions, even services that set out to be helpful can inadvertently make things worse for families. ECI services are no exception. We can make things worse in a number of ways – by failing to listen or respond to parental concerns, by not giving them information about relevant services, or by overloading the family with appointments and information as well as competing demands upon their time and understanding.

This is where the Key Worker role is so important. An issue repeatedly highlighted in the research literature is the need for effective coordination of services for families of children with special care needs. Numerous research studies have reported that parents want a single point of contact with services and an effective, trusted person to support them to get what they need.

Why do we need a resource guide on the Key Worker role?

One reason is that few if any ECI professionals will have received any training in this role in their undergraduate courses. Another reason is that the Key Worker role is not a simple one - developing Key Worker skills is not done overnight, but requires years of practice. It also demands a high level of trust between members of the Early Childhood Intervention Services (ECIS) team.

Although parenting a young child with disabilities can be challenging, it can also be very rewarding. Many families report that, although they would not have wished the experience on themselves, having a child with a developmental disability has actually made them stronger. Of course, this does not happen overnight.

The Key Worker role is one of the ways that ECI services can provide support that will help families become stronger.

The Key Worker is in a unique position to build parental competencies and confidence – to put them back in control of their lives. Once the child starts school, no such support exists. So ECI services need to equip parents for the long journey ahead.

Noah’s Ark has a well deserved reputation for developing resources to support best practice in its services. It is to be commended on the production of this resource. It addresses a key aspect of contemporary practice in a practical manner, and should provide ECI agencies and teams with the ideas and examples they need to make the Key Worker role a central feature of their support for families.

Dr. Tim Moore

Senior Research Fellow,

The Centre for Community Child Health (CCCH)

Murdoch Children's Research Institute

The Royal Children’s Hospital