No More “Train and Train More”: A Functional, Contextual Approach to Collaboration with Families

Empowering parents to support their child’s development and behavior is critically important in early behavioral intervention. However, although parents are often motivated, they may encounter barriers that affect intervention engagement and success, such as difficulties with scheduling or transportation, lack of time or resources for the demands of the program, or challenges implementing strategies at home. A functional, contextual approach including establishing operations, stimulus and response generalization, response acquisition, competing contingencies, and contextual-setting factors can provide the framework for positive collaboration with families, along with compassionate care and therapeutic alliance skills. Finally, a systematic approach to identifying and addressing barriers to collaboration is discussed.