Getting Ready is a child- and parent-focused, strengths-based intervention designed to enhance the school readiness of young children birth to age 5. Getting Ready promotes positive child development by strengthening supports and continuities within and across systems, including parental engagement and collaborative partnerships between early childhood professionals and families.

This project is a scale-up of the evidence-based Getting Ready intervention. Getting Ready is being incorporated into Part C home-based service delivery in Nebraska for early intervention/ early childhood special education personnel who serve infants/toddlers with disabilities and their families.

Getting Ready supports young children’s learning via the coordinated use of child-focused strategies (e.g., sustaining child interest; encouraging turn-taking; challenging/scaffolding; following child’s lead) by EI/ECSE professionals and parents. Furthermore, EI/ECSE professionals actively engage in relationship-building and parent-professional partnership strategies (e.g., affirmation, sharing information, using data, making mutual decisions) during all family interactions. Professionals apply a sequenced collaboration framework that supports the consistent use of child-focused strategies.

To learn the Getting Ready approach, early childhood special education professionals receive training and ongoing coaching on collaborating with families and blending developmental objectives with effective parent-child interactions.

In this project, University of Nebraska-Lincoln coaches provided initial training to 160 service providers/service coordinators and 32 internal coaches from across Nebraska in a series of one-day training sessions. Additionally, up to three web-based feedback sessions from a UNL coach are offered. A digital training module will be created for early childhood professionals unable to attend onsite training. Furthermore, regional staff will be involved in a train-the-trainer series to independently offer Getting Ready training across the state.