Michael Guralnicks Developmental Systems Approach To Early Intervention

Early intervention can be defined as a “systematic and planned effort to promote development through a series of manipulations of environmental or experiential factors initiated during the first five years of life” (Guralnick and Bennet, 1987, p. 19). It is also the provision of support and resources to families of infants and young children from members of informal and formal social support networks that impact both directly and indirectly on parent, family and child functioning (Dunst, Trivette and Jodry, 1997). Early intervention plays a key role in supporting children with disabilities and/or developmental delay. This has not always been the case but has changed and developed significantly over the past two decades for children and their
Guralnicks Developmental Systems Approach is a useful theoretical framework which focuses on and shows an understanding and the breakdown of how early intervention works. This theoretical approach to early intervention is a strengths based approach which focuses on the family patterns of interactions, families’ resources and children’s competencies. While doing so the DSA also looks at identifying the stressors that impact positive developmental outcomes for children (Guralnick, 2011). The DSA not only looks at the families’ resources but the approach also acknowledges the disposable environmental resources such as; community supports available to families and the economic circumstances surrounding them. Guralnicks DSA also has ten key early intervention principles underpinning the theory to ensure correct and common practice whenever it is applied. These principles play a vital role in the application of the DSA theory as many of them can tie in with other theories to ensure the best possible intervention plan is
It is the level that is the most proximal setting. This is the context in which children have direct contact with family members, playground and school influences and peers. The mesosystem consists of the interactions between two or more people from the microsystem in which the child actively participates. The third level of the ecological model is the exosystem. It includes the other people and places that the child themselves may not interact with often but that still have a large effect on them, for example, a parents' workplace, extended family members and their community. The effect is indirect such as when, something occurs in a parent’s workplace that has a follow on effect within the home. The fourth level of the Ecological Systems Theory is the macrosystem which differs fundamentally from the other levels of context, embracing the institutional systems of culture or subculture such as the economic, social, education, legal and political systems (Rosa & Tudge,