Family approach

The family is a child's first surrounding. It's also a first place of learning and principal place of belonging. Every day, parents and siblings stimulate the child, act as behavioural models and provide the care and security the child needs.

The family approach involves supporting and accompanying the family with a view to promoting mutual habilitation between child, parents and siblings. The arrival of a child with special needs can disrupt family life. The person performing the intervention, in this context, aims to help family members to deal with the child's condition and find a satisfying balance between responding to individual and collective needs. For example, the intervention may consist of helping parents to explain their child's condition to brothers and sisters and answer their questions.

The family approach involves paying special attention to the family's characteristics: its dynamic, its values and its culture, as well as to its history (i.e., significant events, previous experience with the health and social services network). It requires recognizing the family's abilities, resources (i.e., social network, problem-solving skills), expectations and priorities, in order to integrate them with the child's needs.

Depending on the connections parents share with their own families of origin, the family-based intervention may extend to grandparents or other family members. As grandparents are often actively involved with the family, whether they are concerned with their grandchild's development or the adaptation of his/her parents, they may be met with on a punctual basis to be informed and reassured.