Early intervention in special education and rehabilitation

Abstract

The conceptions of early interventions and the implications for programming has changed since 1960s, as different programmes started to be applied, assuming that they can have the influence on the ability to learn, the motivation for learning and social competences of users. The early intervention in education and rehabilitation consists of the multidisciplinary services that are provided for the children with medical risks for regular development outcome or with developmental retardation and disorders in order to improve child's health and welfare, to strengthen the development of abilities, to reduce the influence of difficulties and developmental retardation, to prevent functional deteriorations and to improve adequate parentship and entire family functioning. These aims are realized through developmental and education programmes for children and through various forms of the support to families. The early intervention is not limitted to the first three years of life, to the striving for a child to overcome basic and typical sensomotoric abilities, but it is also spread up to the age 4-6, through the exposition to cognitively oriented pre-school programmes, parallel with the continuation of the intervention on psycho-motoric development, but also to the age 7-12, through the support to the education activities of a child, both at home and at school. The results of numerous researches clearly suggest that during the first years of life, the "good grounds" of the entire development are established and that they cannot be established without a high-quality physical and social environment for the early development and learning of children. One of the first practical steps in ensuring a good environment for the early development of children isto educate parents, so that they can be more successful in their parental role and capable of optimum stimulation of the development of their child.