The history and current context of early intervention in
Spain are too complex to cover in one blog post. Today, I summarize one of
Spain’s strengths: key leaders.
Marga Cañadas,
the assistant dean for occupational therapy at the Catholic University of
Valencia (UCV), has been the pioneer of a family-centered approach. For the
past 4 years or so, she has spoken often about the need to put early
intervention in natural environments, to make it family-centered, and to make
it functional by making it routines based. She is the director of UCV’s own
early intervention center, La Alquería, where she has initiated these kinds of
reforms. The Dean of the School of Psychology, Teacher Education, and
Educational Sciences at UCV, Gabi Martínez, has been a stalwart supporter of
Marga and has sponsored many of my trips to Spain. Truly, UCV applies its
commitment to helping people with disabilities by being a major force in early
intervention. Here you see Gabi and Marga on the right. From the left are Pau
García Grau, doctoral student and two-time Siskin International Intern; Lola
Grau, Assistant Dean for Psychology at UCV, me, and the Rector of the
university.
A nationwide coordinating organization for 884 agencies
working with people with intellectual and developmental disabilities is FEAPS. This
organization has been working on a “transformation” of services to improve
quality, specifically to focus on family quality of life. The director of that
project is Javier Tamarit, a titan in the field of developmental disabilities
in Spain. Early intervention (meaning of course children 0-6, as in most of the
world) services have been part of this transformation, with 38 “centers”
participating so far. On YouTube, you can see presentations from a recent conference on
advances in the transformation of early intervention services.
An example of Javier’s generosity is his securing over 700 participants for a
study Pau García has been conducting with the Spanish version of my Family
Quality of Life (FaQoL) scale. Here’s Javier, speaking at a recent meeting
organized by the Castilla la Mancha FEAPS.
Family quality of life is a priority with FEAPS, largely
thanks to a couple of giants in the field, Miguel Ángel Verdugo and Climent Giné. Climent has won the
international award from the American Association on Intellectual and
Developmental Disabilities and he is a professor emeritus at Ramon Llull
University, in Barcelona, where he was the dean of the School of Psychology,
Education, and Sport Sciences. He has been studying family quality of life and
family needs assessment as part of an international team of researchers led by Ann
Turnbull. He has also been conducting a qualitative study of implementation of
the Routines-Based Model with 11 early intervention teams in five programs. In
a studious, warm-hearted, and passionate way, Climent has guided students and
fellow researchers towards ever more family-centered approaches. He was also
kind enough to lend us one of his doctoral students, Natasha Baqués Aguiar, to be a Siskin
International Intern. Here are Climent, a translator, me, and Javier.
Other outstanding individuals are propelling Spain out of an
outmoded clinic-situated, child-centered, professional-driven approach to
atención temprana into
a routines-based, family-centered, and functional approach. I think of Juan de
Albacete (that’s not his name; that’s where he’s from, but it’s how I know
him), Cristina Díaz, Consejera Sandra Fernández Herranz, Climent’s team of
researchers, the staff of La Alquería, Victoria from Mallorca, Carmen Serrano,
Rosa Fernández… many inspiring people. But these leaders, Marga Cañadas (with Gabi Martínez),
Javier Tamarit, and Climent Giné
are emblems of the frequent finding in early intervention implementation research—that
leadership is key.
