A Day in the Life of an Early Interventionist at Bright Start
Video Transcript:
Kat:
Hi, my name is Kat, and I’m going to take you on a bit of a journey with me today. My goal is to show
you a glimpse into a day in the life of an early interventionist. Being an EI is incredibly rewarding, and we
really do wear two different hats when it comes to this role. On the one hand, we’re helping families
come up with some goals that they’d like to work on, and then working together with those families to
create truly customized, tailored fit strategies to achieve those goals. And on the other hand, we’re
putting together a service plan to connect families to resources in the area and therapies. However,
none of those wonderful and important things can happen for me, at least, without coffee. Truly, this is
how a day typically begins in my life.
Kat:
Okay, now that I’m sufficiently caffeinated, I can go ahead and start my day. I like to go over my
schedule on Google Calendar just to see what’s going on today. So I’m going to pull up my calendar,
looks like I have a little office time in the morning, followed by home visit, a little more office time, and a
training with our newest hire, Mary Britt. I am the trainer at the Charleston office at Bright Start, so a
huge part of what I do is training. But during my office time today, I want to make sure I call one of our
speech therapists. She just completed an evaluation for one of my clients, and said that that client does
indeed qualify for speech therapy. So I’m going to give her a call and see if she can join us for a change
review meeting. Our relationship with therapist is so important. We’re all in the same team working
together to help meet a family’s needs. Let me give her a quick call.
Speaker 2:
Hello.
Kat:
Hi. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2:
I’m doing well. How about yourself?
Kat:
Great. I was just calling to touch base about that evaluation and see how it went.
Speaker 2:
Sure. She did really well. She was a bit shy in the beginning, but she warmed up to me after about the
first 30 minutes or so. I’m definitely seeing a lot of strengths in her receptive language. She’s able to
follow simple directions and point to some of her toys, which is fantastic. My main focus is go going to
be on expressive language in the beginning, starting with encouraging more sound production in play,
and then eventually moving towards some more functional communication goals.
Kat:
That all sounds awesome. I’m excited for you to share that with the family. They told me they would like
to meet next Friday at 1:00 to complete a change of review meeting on their lunch break. Does that
happen to work for your schedule?
Speaker 2:
Let me see. Yeah, I could make that work.
Kat:
Awesome.
Speaker 2:
I’m not in the area on Fridays though.
Kat:
Okay.
Speaker 2:
But I could call in and go over the evaluation and plan of care over the phone.
Kat:
That works. I will let the family know. And would you mind sending me a copy of that evaluation
whenever you get a chance?
Speaker 2:
Absolutely.
Kat:
Thank you so much. I know this family is really excited about getting speech started.
Speaker 2:
I am too. I’ll get that evaluation sent over and let me know if you need anything else.
Kat:
Wonderful. Thank you.
Speaker 2:
Great. Have a good one.
Kat:
You too. Bye.
Speaker 2:
Bye.
Kat:
I’m seeing a family later this afternoon, so I need to get prepared for that visit. One of the most amazing
things about family training at Bright Start is that the parent decides what we work on each and every
week. I can’t predict the future, unfortunately, but I can go over all of the family’s goals, and remind
myself of what they want to focus on, in general. That way I feel prepared when they choose something
to work on. I can also reference the summary sheet from the last time that I met with the family, and I
will be sure to check in and see how that goal went, and decide if we can make it even better, or if there
are some changes or updates we could make to that goal. I’m just going to take a few minutes here and
go over the goals for the family and that summary sheet.
Kat:
Driving in between visits is something I really look forward to. I’m not the kind of person who enjoys
sitting at a desk all day. So it’s nice to kind of break up my day, and I can listen to podcasts, audio books,
music. I just really enjoy having that kind of processing time in between visits, and tasks, and meetings,
and things. I love family training and the coaching model, but I’m also a very type A person, to say the
least, and so I enjoy the service coordination side of things, just as much.
Kat:
It’s important to write down everything that we do and we document those things in two different
systems. One is Bridges, this is where we put all of our service notes for tasks completed for under three
clients. Our second system is Therap, this is what we use for our over three clients. Speaking of service
notes, I need to get some done now for today’s visit and the other tasks that I’ve done, so I’m going to
go ahead and take care of that and I’ll see you guys again in a little bit.
Kat:
It’s the end of the day, so I’m heading on inside to my home for the evening. Thank you so much for
joining me on this journey into a day in the life of an early interventionist. I hope you found it as
interesting and rewarding as I do. Have a good night.