Supporting Sibling Involvement in Treatment Sessions: A Program for Pediatric Occupational Therapists

Background. Additional individuals, such as parents, are commonly used in children with disabilities’ therapeutic interventions. Although siblings have been identified as potential agents of change and can provide many benefits for a child with a disability, research primarily focuses on peer- or parent-mediated interventions. Therefore, there are no current evidence-based practice guidelines for clinicians on the inclusion of siblings in intervention for children with disabilities. Objective. The purpose of this capstone project is to develop an educational guide for pediatric occupational therapists on the benefits of and the strategies for including siblings in treatment sessions for children with developmental disabilities. ACOTE Area. The primary ACOTE area relevant to this project is Program Development and Evaluation. Methods. A two-part approach was used to develop the program: 1) a literature review and 2) participant observation via the researcher’s site. Due to the lack of research on sibling-mediated interventions, a literature review was conducted to gain information on best practices for peer-mediated interventions to adapt for the educational guide. Participant observations were conducted at Lekotek of Georgia with the purpose of gaining insight on clinicians’ strategies used to include siblings into play sessions. After collecting all information, the data was analyzed and synthesized to create relevant chapters for the educational guide. Results. The final program is a comprehensive manual on the benefits of including siblings into treatment sessions and has a plethora of strategies on how to successfully do so. The program is a PDF document, is approximately 40 pages long, and contains 9 chapters. This program was designed to be used by pediatric occupational therapists and the recipients are any pediatric clients receiving occupational therapy services, no matter their diagnosis, and their siblings. The strategies and interventions are to be utilized as often as the therapist sees fit, but ideally, sibling inclusion would occur as frequently as possible to maximize the benefits. Conclusions and Relevance. As occupational therapists should consider a client’s entire context, it is within the realm of occupational therapy to include siblings within sessions and address the sibling relationship. The developed program can assist pediatric occupational therapist in successfully including siblings in their clients’ treatments, therefore potentially benefiting the client’s development, the sibling relationship, and the overall family dynamic.