EITP will host a winter webinar series starting January 2018!  Click the title of an upcoming webinar to learn more about topic, credit or registration.

EITP will be closed for the holidays on Monday-Tuesday, December 25-26, 2017 and Monday, January 1, 2018. We will have reduced service on Wednesday - Friday, December 27-29, 2017. We hope you all have a great holiday season!

In the event that an EITP training is canceled due to severe weather, EITP makes every attempt to notify participants as soon as possible. 

We will send an email to registrants through our Cvent system, post an announcement on our website, and call training sites to best reach people affected by the cancellation.

Alternatively,  if you are concerned about your safety traveling to an event and need to cancel your registration, please visit our Cancellation and Refund Policy page for details.

The 12^th Annual Empowering Professionals Conference: Striving for Excellence through Knowledge, Collaboration & Support will be held in Palos Hills, IL on Friday, March 2, 2018. 

This year the keynote speaker will be Barbara Weber, M.S., CCC-SLP, and she will be presenting on "Facilitating Skill Development for Young Children Using Daily Routines". 

To learn more, please download our EPC Save the Date flyer (pdf). 

Check the EITP website for registration and more details which are coming soon!

Talking with parents about their child’s development is easier when using CDC’s FREE Milestone Tracker app!  The new app offers the following:

• Interactive milestone checklists for children ages 2 months through 5 years, illustrated with photos and videos
• Tips and activities to help children learn and grow
• Information on when to act early and talk with a doctor about developmental delays
• A personalized milestone summary that can be easily shared with the doctor and other care providers
• Reminders of appointments and developmental screening

Although it is packed with parent-friendly features, this app isn’t just for parents! Healthcare providers can use it to help with developmental surveillance as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics, and early care and education providers can use it to better understand their students’ skills and abilities and to engage families in monitoring developmental progress.

Learn more and get information on downloading the app at CDC’s Milestone Tracker website. The app is available in the App Store and on Google Play.

All programs that serve young children and their families can improve outcomes for children by making a difference for their families. This video, Supporting Children By Improving Family Outcomes, describes the importance of supporting families, collecting data on family outcomes, and using the data to improve the program.

Using the family data collected by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special Education's Part C/Early Intervention Program as an example, this video highlights how three families who received early intervention benefitted from support to their family.

This video is a companion to the video Child Outcomes: Step-By-Step.  To learn more about this video and other related resources, please visit http://ectacenter.org/eco/pages/videos-supporting.asp. 

This video is published collaboratively by the Center for IDEA Early Childhood Data Systems (DaSy); the Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center (ECTA); and the Desired Results Access Project, Napa County Office of Education, funded by the California Department of Education, Special Education Division; and collaborating partners: Early ACCESS, Iowa Department of Education; LEAP Preschool Model, Positive Early Learning Experiences Center; Pyramid Model Consortium; New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department Office of Child Development; UNM Continuing Education Early Childhood Services Center; Developmental TIPS Project, Munroe-Meyer Institute at the University of Nebraska Medical Center; and the Ohio Developmental Disabilities Council.

The Diverse BookFinder is where you can identify and explore multicultural picture books. The collection focuses on depictions of racial and cultural diversity published in the U.S. since 2002. Please see their Mission page for more information about the project.

Below you will find curated lists of books from our collection, organized in commonly-requested categories. These are short lists, you can think of each as a sample of what is available in the Diverse BookFinder.

• Collection: Activism
• Collection: Adoption
• Collection: Any Child
• Collection: Baby Shower
• Collection: Beautiful Life
• Collection: Biographies
• Collection: Clean Water
• Collection: Cross-Group
• Collection: Family
• Collection: Folklore
• Collection: Holidays
• Collection: Immigrant/Refugee
• Collection: Incidental
• Collection: Informational
• Collection: Mindfulness
• Collection: MLK Day
• Collection: Multiracial Families
• Collection: Muslim
• Collection: New Siblings
• Collection: Oppression
• Collection: Race/Culture Concepts
• Collection: School
• Collection: Second Language/Bilingual
• Collection: Skin Tone

Where to find books:

While this collection is housed at Bates College, these titles may be available at your local library, through interlibrary loan, or from our very own Illinois Early Intervention Clearinghouse! 

The EI Clearinghouse is a free lending library available to anyone in Illinois, with books, eBooks, DVDs and more related to childhood development, parenting, and young children with special needs.  You can search the library or request materials by visiting http://eiclearinghouse.org/resources/library/. 

In each Newsletter, EITP highlights a free article focused on Early Intervention that will be available for PDF download from the Young Exceptional Children journal!  

Currently, we are featuring "Voices from the Field:  Developing and Promoting Early Intervention Expertise" by Bonnie Keilty from Young Exceptional Children, v16, September 2013.  This link will be open until March 4, 2018.

"Early intervention takes its form from a variety of fields. It has its obvious roots in the fields that primarily provide early intervention services--special education, allied health, and early childhood education. Early intervention also draws from public health as a coordinated approach to addressing the biological, psychological, and social needs of those supported by the program. More so than any other area, however, early intervention is fundamentally grounded in child and family development. Professional development for both emerging professionals and those already in the field can provide ongoing, intensive experiences to develop mastery and skillful application of knowledge and practice with infants, toddlers, and families within one's disciplinary work." Abstract from ERIC

The “Service Coordination Corner” is a new column featured in our newsletters to spotlight the important work that service coordinators are doing within the Illinois EI System.

EITP has been busy with statewide and national initiatives around service coordination, many of which have been nationally recognized.  Here are some highlights from 2017:

• Service Coordination training has been transformed into a blended learning opportunity which includes online training, a workbook with job-embedded activities, and a series of webinars to be completed within the first 3 months on the job.  The training includes all of the key features outlined by Carl J. Dunst in his 2015 article in Infants and Young Children on evidence-informed professional development.
• In addition to the blended SC training, service coordinators in Illinois now have their very own community of practice (the IL SC CoP) to connect and support one another across the state.
• The CFC SC Trainer Forum has been established so the people who train and support new and existing service coordinators at the local level have an opportunity to network and support one another in these important activities.
• Some of the topics that have been discussed in both groups (IL SC CoP and CFC SC Trainer Forum) include transition, child outcomes, and national initiatives that are being established to support service coordinators in Illinois and across the nation.
• EITP was invited to speak about our statewide initiatives at the Division for Early Childhood Conference in October 2016 and at the Office of Special Education Leadership Conference in July 2017.
• EITP is actively involved in a National SC Training Workgroup that is working across states to share resources and collaborate on professional development offerings for service coordinators across the nation. EITP is working with this group to co-host a cross-state webinar series for service coordinators in the winter/spring of 2018.
• EITP recently participated in the first National SC Leadership Institute which was hosted by the Early Childhood Personnel Center. Action plans to empower and support service coordinators in Illinois and across the nation are currently in development.

Please stay tuned in 2018 for more information on local, state and national initiatives as we work together to prepare, empower and support service coordinators!

EITP has added a new online training, Using Your Facilitation Skills to Be an Effective Host, which is geared toward service coordinators.  The training provides an overview of what it means to be a facilitator and the roles service coordinators fulfill when facilitating team meetings, as well as facilitation tips and strategies to overcome facilitation barriers.

Please note that this online training was originally part of a linked learning opportunity connected to a live webinar held on 3/8/17 with the same title.  Those who participated in that linked learning opportunity (in Spring 2017) do not need to repeat this online training.

If you are a service coordinator, or someone who helps to prepare, train or support new and existing service coordinators and would like more information about these initiatives please contact EITP Professional Development Specialist, Sarah Nichols, at snichols@illinoiseitraining.org. 

Phase III, Year 2 continues to move forward as more people get involved in the SSIP activities in their area.

• Local Leadership Teams (LTs) in the 3 pilot areas (Aurora, Williamson County, and East St. Louis) continue to offer professional development and focused conversations around the Child Outcomes Summary (COS) process.
• Local LTs have now received evaluation data from their first 2 quarters of Professional Development (PD) offerings. As Teams reach more providers, they will use this information to plan next steps for the PD in their areas.
• The PD rubric was featured in a poster session at the DEC Conference in Portland in October. It also continues to be used for reviewing and improving our statewide PD.
• A Resource Package of activities to support the COS process is nearly final and should be available for use by the LTs very soon!
• The Messaging workgroup has completed their work on a referral brochure for primary referral sources. In addition, the EI Clearinghouse has posted a checklist for reviewing EI public awareness materials on their website: http://eiclearinghouse.org/resources/public-awareness/.
• Reports about the benefits of modifying the COS process continue to be positive with families providing more information, providers and service coordinators gaining a greater understanding of the child’s development, and everyone experiencing more streamlined meetings.
• As we continue the implementation phase, some Local Leadership Teams are welcoming new members and thanking those who are stepping away from the work. Thank you to the following team members for their time on SSIP:

  • Tammy Wrobbel, Developmental Therapist

  • Corin Intrieri, Occupational Therapist

  • Jenny Norton, Physical Therapist

  • Kristi Duelm, Counseling

  • Terry Davey, Speech-Language Pathologist

As we move forward, we will be evaluating teams’ fidelity to the outlined COS process and increasing Local Leadership Teams understanding of evidence-based intervention practices. In addition, Cornerstone and system manual modifications will be considered to ensure that these items support family-centered services and EI principles.

We welcome everyone’s input so if you have any comments, please email them to cguillen@illinois.edu.

Yusuf Akamoglu from the University of Illinois, Department of Special Education, is working on a research project, which is about parent-implemented communication strategies during storybook reading. Dr. Hedda Meadan and Yusuf invite you to take part in this research project by completing a survey about parent and child behaviors in a few 1-minute video clips.

It will take about 10-15 minutes to complete the survey and you will be entered into a drawing for one of 20 $10 Amazon.com gift cards.

Please follow the link below to access the survey:

http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/3931626/PiCSS-2

Thank you in advance for taking the time out of your day to contribute to this exciting research project!

To view upcoming events sponsored by EITP only, please visit http://go.illinois.edu/EITPevents.

For a list of online trainings offered by EITP, please visit our EITP Online Events Calendar.

For a list of events sponsored by other entities (non-EITP events), please see the Non-EITP Events Calendar.