jamesjmessina.com

Helping You Become All You are Capable of Becoming

Parent's Guide Book For Setting up a Program of Floor Time Volunteers

12. Parent's Guide Book For Setting up a Program of Floor Time Volunteers
Tools for Early Identification and Intervention- 0-5 years
By James J. Messina, Ph.D

Parent's Guide Book For Setting up a Program of Floor Time Volunteers

Rationale for Program of Volunteers for Floor Time:

Floor Time is a strategy to assist children develop emotionally so that they will simultaneously grow cognitively, verbally and socially. For most children who have specific needs there is a need to have 6 to 8 floor times sessions of thirty minutes or more a day.

This is a very time intensive and energy sapping experience for adults to do on a daily basis. For this reason, it is not expected that parents would be the only floor timers in the life of their child.

Who should be recruited to be Floor Time Volunteers:

Families are asked to recruit: any individual 12 years or older from:

family relatives including older siblings

family friends

neighbors

members of family's faith community

teens who need community service hours

volunteers from the Volunteer Action Center

volunteers from retirement communities

university students who need hands on experience

work colleagues of parents or relatives

How to recruit Floor Time Volunteer:

1. From the above list brainstorm a list of potential recruits to be volunteers and put their names down on a list and then designate if they are High, Fair or Low potential volunteers. Those who seem to be High and "best bets" to become volunteers, make a contact immediately to sign them up for the initial volunteer training session.

2. Create a flyer which announces the need for "floor time" volunteers and place these in your neighborhood, faith community, local middle and high schools, local retirement centers and in the local college and university's Departments of Special Education, Speech Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy, Early Education, Psychology, Social Work, Mental Health Counseling, Pre-medicine, and any other relevant educational center on the college campus.

3. Put an ad in the various newsletters of the target recruits: congregational bulletins, neighborhood newspapers, family newsletters, schools announcements and newspapers, volunteer organization newsletters etc.

4. Use the word of mouth of current recruits to new unidentified prospects to network out to gather as many possible recruits as possible.

5. By the tenth week of the "Floor Time" 12 week semester, line up current volunteers for the next 12 week semester and then actively assign recruits who are on a waiting list who have been trained.

6. Continuously recruit so as to have a number of backups who are trained and ready to provide floor time to the designated child.

What is a Floor Time Volunteer asked to do:

Over a twelve week period, provide a minimum of a hour a week of floor time In the family home or in the school classroom to the designated child.

to participate in an initial training process with the parents on floor time

to check in with parents of child concerning scheduling of floor time appointment either in the home or in the child's classroom

to establish a warm, caring, nurturing and respectful environment for the child so that the child feels secure, respected, loved and nurtured

to allow the child to take the lead in all of the floor time event

to provide constructive obstructions to the child to facilitate the imagination, problem solving and decision making of the child

to communicate with parents concerning how each floor time event went and what has changed since the last event with child

to utilize common themes which seem to bring the child into higher levels of symbolic reasoning and pretend play

to allow the videotaping of each floor time experience of the child for ongoing training, follow up and evaluation of the efficacy of the floor time experiences with the designated child

to involve parents or the child's teacher when child is having a difficult time in the floor time event

Components of the Two Hour Training Program for Floor Time Volunteers:

1. Watch the first half only of the Floor Time video offered by Scholastic Magazine with Dr Greenspan (approximately 15 minutes)

2. Review the manual of handouts (approximately 30 minutes) and discuss with volunteers (a lecture which you the parents video tape yourself doing so that it can be used in a video tape library for future volunteer training)

3. Watch a video or live demonstration of floor time with the child (45 minutes)

4. Dialogue with the parents about the background and needs of the child (30 minutes)

Much of this two hours of training can be done by video tapes which are made available to the volunteers which they can watch on their own time. The only face to face training needs to be the thirty minute dialogue process with parents which is the culmination of the training process

Form 1:
Parents Prospects List for Floor Time Volunteer

Family relatives including older siblings:

Name:

Telephone: