| Description |
The COVID-19 pandemic changed the way early intervention (EI) services are provided to children and their families in fundamental ways, as systems made the rapid shift to telehealth service delivery in April 2020. While previous findings point to families’ acceptability and satisfaction with telehealth delivered services in pediatrics (e.g., Wallisch et al., 2019), such data was limited to participants enrolled in research studies. Understanding the experiences of families and providers transitioning to telehealth during the pandemic is key to optimizing the potential benefits offered through this service delivery approach. The COVID-19 pandemic created a natural opportunity to measure acceptability, satisfaction, and perceived efficacy of telehealth delivered early intervention services from both EI provider and family perspectives. In this presentation, we will describe survey data from family and provider perspectives on telehealth delivered EI services in Illinois from two points during the COVID-19 pandemic, July 2020 and March 2021. During this session, participants will have an opportunity to reflect on the shared examples, discuss lessons learned, and identify challenges and solutions for using telehealth as a service delivery option in early intervention.
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