ABSTRACT
The term “early childhood interventions” is extraordinarily broad, as programs for young children and their families encompass a large number of professions, foci of development, and methods. Early intervention services may mean: health or nursing services for medically fragile infants; services such as physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, and child development activities for children showing developmental delay; family preservation services for families with current child maltreatment; or infant mental health services for cases where there is an identified problem in the parent-child dyad. It may also mean preventative services to statistically “at-risk” families of young children, risk being defined by a number of variables including income, parent age, birth experience and outcome, first-time parenting, and parent history of mental illness or substance use.
