FAMILY Assessment
F.A.M.I.L.Y. Assessment	How the Assessment works
Questions & Answers

The FAMILY Assessment is a multi-disciplinary assessment procedure used to evaluate the abilities of a young child who is deaf/hard of hearing as the child interacts with family members. 

The resulting data are used in several ways:

• to develop the IFSP

• to identify new therapeutic strategies

• to set new performance goals

• as a valuable database for research

The FAMILY Assessment helps the parents to effectively guide their child's development. As a result, the family's confidence increases - not only in the specific area of disability, but in all aspects of parenting skills. The FAMILY Assessment is positive information used in positive ways. Benefits to the child are enormous.

The assessment has the capability to evaluate 9 developmental areas. The instruments are reliable and valid from newborn through 3 years of age.

The assessment procedure is family-centered, which complements the philosophy of the Colorado Home Intervention Program (CHIP). The parents are videotaped while interacting with the child, then the family completes several protocols.

The assessment is completed at six-month intervals. A half-hour videotape is obtained and a series of checklists is completed each time the assessment is done. A team of professional coders is trained to watch and code the videotape and to report the results. The information is compiled at a central location and the results are then dispersed to the family and to the intervention team. The information can be incorporated into the IFSP for each family.

::ARTICLES::

F.A.M.I.L.Y. Assessment - A Multidisciplinary Evaluation Tool (pdf)
by Arlene Stredler-Brown and Christine Yoshinaga-Itano

Family-Centered Development Assessment (pdf)
by Jan Hafer and Arlene Stredler-Brown

  For additional information, please contact:

Jennie Germano, Director of Early Education Programs
Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind
33 N. Institute
Colorado Springs, CO 80903
(719) 578-2116
(719) 578-2139 (fax)
e-mail: jgermano@csdb.org