PREPARING STUDENTS TO UNDERSTAND AND HONOR FAMILIES AS PARTNERS

As service providers, speech-language pathologists are in the midst of a transition from the ''expert'' model of intervention to forming par tnerships with families and serving as resources. Although the shift f rom client-centered to family-centered service delivery is underway, l ittle information has been made available on steps being taken at the pre-service training level to accomplish this change and the success o f such efforts. This paper describes an innovative approach to prepari ng speech-language pathology students to be family centered in their p rofessional interactions and service delivery. Over a 4-year period, 4 1 students embarking on their first semester of clinical training were paired with families of children with special needs for a family visi t of 2 to 4 hours in length. The components of the training included p re-visit classroom exercises focused on personal values clarification and language sensitivity, visit orientation for the students and famil ies, a family visit, journal writing by students about the visit exper ience, and post-visit class discussion of the visit experiences and le arning outcomes. Pre- and post-measurement of students' attitudes rega rding a family's role in intervention reflected a statistically signif icant change in students' responses to questionnaire items. The studen ts' responses indicated an increase in family-centered attitudes and d emonstrated the effectiveness of this approach in shaping those attitu des.