Joint Planning in Paediatric Rehabilitation

The Applied Coaching Model (ACM) and Applied Coaching Tool (ACT) was created by a physiotherapist at the Alberta Children’s Hospital, to be used by therapists to help parents learn about their child’s development and achieve their child’s therapy goals. The program uses Family-Centered Care, relationship building, and coaching to help guide parents how best to help their child. This program has different strategies that therapists can use to connect with families to assist in creating goals, learning, practicing skills, receiving feedback, and helping parents learn how to modify the strategies they use based on how their child performs/develops. 

The purpose of this study was to measure if the ACM and ACT will be accepted and used as intended by therapists in the Early Childhood Rehabilitation Program at the Alberta Children’s Hospital. Therapists joined a one-day training session led by one of the study investigators acting as a local site champion.  Therapists were asked to choose coaching behaviours to practice and try the ACM and ACT with two clients per week over the course of 5 months to guide practice change. They were also given time in their schedules twice a week to use practice sheets to write about their experiences with applying the model with their clients. Participants were asked to journal on anything that helped or prevented them from using this model during their sessions. At the end of the training, the champion watched the therapists using the model in 2-3 sessions with a patient to score the therapist’s use of the model. 

Results showed that therapists accepted and used the ACM and ACT accurately in their sessions with their clients. Results from this study will be used to create a plan to train other therapists at the Alberta Children’s Hospital and other children’s hospitals to ensure the model is applied appropriately in practice.