Caregiver coaching in early intervention : the example of COPCA

‘COPing with and CAring for infants with special needs’ (COPCA) is a family-centred early intervention programme. The major intervention strategy of COPCA is caregiver coaching. To understand the background of COPCA’s coaching approach it is important to know the aims of the approach, the content of coaching, the required attitude of health professionals in the role of being a COPCA coach and the role allocation of the health professional and the family members. Various RCT’s showed, that COPCA’s coaching is a promising approach, which was associated with sustained improvement of infants’ and family outcomes. Caregiver coaching was associated with an increased motor repertoire of the infant and with better family empowerment and quality of life. Caregivers highly appreciate the support from coaches, because coaching enables them to autonomously promote their infant’s development by stimulating the infant to explore and try out activities during daily routines. The lecture provides explanations of potentially underlying mechanisms of the effectiveness of COPCA’s coaching