Evaluating early intervention: Accountability methods for service deliveryinnovations

Providing accountability as a core professional role includes documenting t he outcomes of consultations with parents and teachers. Furthermore, these consultations can serve as building blocks for evaluating overall intervent ion program effectiveness. We report the use of single-case accountability designs for examining individual child outcomes and evaluating the Ohio Ear ly Childhood Intervention (ECI) project. Procedural guidelines (termed PASS Key) were used to help structure the process of ecobehavioral analysis, col laborative consultation, and naturalistic intervention design for children' s learning, developmental, and behavioral problems. The methods serve as ex amples of functional assessment, accountability, and program evaluation eff orts appropriate for early intervention consultations. Moreover, the result s offer evidence for the effectiveness of the ECI model.