Why Parent Coaching
A parent coach can positively impact how parents and families support their children in home and community environments (Williams & Sawyer, 2023). Effective parent coaching can shift how clinicians, interventionists, and professionals deliver service. Parent coaching often takes less time than traditional intervention and facilitates more efficient parent and family involvement. By supporting parents in learning skills and strategies that help their child, they can more effectively address developmental needs and become empowered to take ownership of their child’s growth and development. This causes less dependency and reliance on intervention professionals.
Interventionists, clinicians, and professionals who learn to effectively coach parents can transition from being perceived as experts to becoming valued collaborators who actively assist families in meaningful ways. A skilled parent coach moves beyond superficially providing recommendations and demonstrating their intervention skills with a child to empowering parents to help their children develop how they want to. A parent coach puts their strong knowledge of child development and intervention to the best use possible by empowering caregivers. A parent coach can make a lasting and impactful difference in a family's life.
Research indicates that intervention clinicians typically do not acquire adequate parent coaching skills throughout post-secondary training. Further, many factors contribute to the poor uptake of parent coaching, including inadequate professional development opportunities (Douglas et al., 2020; Stewart & Applequist, 2019).
What is the Relationship Strengths Based (RSB) Coaching© Approach all about?
RSB Coaching will deepen your understanding of family-centred practice so you can leverage family strengths, draw on parents’ motivations to support their child and understand the essential elements of the therapeutic relationship with parents to become a true collaborator. RSB Coaching is a parent coaching approach that supports caregivers in learning information, supports, and strategies that help them achieve their goals for themselves and their children. The RSB coaching approach meets each parent and child’s unique needs by emphasizing parent strengths and family context. It works towards achieving individualized goals developed collaboratively between the parent and coach. The RSB Coaching approach was not developed specifically for any developmental disability, difference, or neurodiversity. Instead, RSB Coaching relies on the expertise of the parent coach. It creates space and opportunity for the coach to utilize their experience, knowledge base and clinical expertise working with various developmental differences. RSB Coaching is a powerful way for helpgivers to work with parents and share their knowledge and expertise, thus truly empowering families.
RSB Coaching professional development and certification was created for interventionists, clinicians, professionals, and care providers who work directly with families, parents, and young children with developmental concerns. The program was informed and developed through extensive experience coaching and training others in coaching practices, reading about, participating in, and structuring research about caregiver coaching, and carefully exploring the research around the most impactful ways for professionals to learn and become clinically competent in new skills.
Learner Individualization in RSB Coaching© Professional Development
The RSB Coaching© professional development program is a practical, comprehensive, and evidence-based approach to educating intervention providers to learn how to parent coach. The RSB Coaching© Professional Development program meets participants' individualized needs. Many intentionally created opportunities exist to learn and reflect deeply on what it means, looks, and feels like to be a parent coach. Meaningful and lasting learning happens when adults actively participate in the learning process, a principle embedded in all RSB Coaching© Professional Development program levels.
Foundations of the RSB Coaching© Professional Development and Certification Program
The RSB Coaching© Professional Development and Certification program draws from Miller's pyramid, an existing model of clinical competency training (Miller, 1990). This learning framework was developed with the recognition that a singular approach to instruction or evaluation falls short in encapsulating the multifaceted learning journey undertaken by professionals during their education. Since its development, Miller’s pyramid has impacted how health science education is structured (Cruess et al., 2016). RSB Coaching© uses this framework of clinical competency professional development.
RSB Coaching© encompasses evidence-based practice specific to adult learning and professional development (i.e., Trivette et al., 2009). Adult learning literature clearly shows that combined and varied methods of instruction yield the most optimal learning outcomes. There needs to be more than a single method of teaching (i.e., seminar, lecture, or webinar) for deep and meaningful learning and to impact and shift clinician practice. Instead, combining, integrating, and reflecting on varied and meaningful learning activities results in a deeper understanding of the subject matter. Furthermore, learners must practice what they are learning with support to become clinically competent in new skills. The more complex the skill, the more practice and support is required.
Clinical Competence in RSB Coaching©
Developing clinical competence in parent coaching is complex and multifaceted. Clinical competency implies professionalism, appropriate communication, and the understanding and contextual application of content knowledge, practical skills, and clinical reasoning (Charlin & van der Vleuten, 2004; Epstein & Hundert, 2002). To demonstrate, assess, and reflect on clinical competence, there must be a benchmark that learners can use to evaluate and reflect on their newly learned skills. In RSB Coaching©, this benchmark is the RSB Clinical Competency Rating Scale© (i.e., RSB-CCRS©), developed through extensive examination of research evidence and engagement in research-based activities. The RSB-CCRS© was developed specifically for the RSB Coaching© professional development program. This tool is comprehensively reviewed in the RSB Coaching© professional development program and is used to examine and assess clinical competence for level 3 support and ensuing RSB Coaching© Certification.
References
Charlin, B. & van der Vleuten, C. (2004). Standardized assessment of reasoning in contexts of uncertainty: the script concordance approach. Evaluation & the Health Professions, 27(3), pp. 304-319.
Cruess R.L., Cruess, S.R., Steinert, Y. (2016). Amending Miller’s pyramid to include professional identity formation. Academic Medicine, 91(2), 180-185.
Douglas, S. N., Meadan, H., & Kammes, R. (2020). Early interventionists’ caregiver coaching: A mixed methods approach exploring experiences and practices. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 40(2), 84–96.
Epstein, R.M., & Hundert, E.M. (2002). Defining and assessing professional competence. JAMA, 287(2), p. 226-234.
Miller, G. (1990). The Assessment of clinical skills/competence/performance. Academic Medicine (September Supplement), 65(9), S63-S67.
Trivette, C.M., Dunst, C.J., Hamby, D.W., & O’Herin, C.E. (2009). Characteristics and consequences of adult learning methods and strategies. Practical Evaluation Reports, 2(1), 1–32.
Stewart, S. L., & Applequist, K. (2019). Diverse families in early intervention: Professionals’ views of coaching. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 33(2), 242–256.
Williams, C.S. & Sawyer, G.E. (2023). Going beyond “I’m a coach”: Adopting a caregiver coaching framework in EI. Young Exceptional Children, 27(1), 3–15. https://doi.org/10.1177/10962506231153