JCPSLP November 2017

Table 2. Summary of themes and their categories with illustrative quotations

Theme Category

Parent

Illustrative quotations

Parent commitment Experienced teachers

Sue “I can see that it’ll all be worth it...to get off on the right foot…to find the love of learning…”

Elise “They’re teachers that have worked with special needs kids. They know.”

Age appropriate Sophie “It just seemed to slot in exactly what we needed, you know, another year of kinder is too much boredom, and school’s just too quick.”

Individualised approach

Sue “One of the best things is the fact that they are [the children] taught as individuals.”

“It’s the Foundation”

Communication Sophie “You open your [communication] book every day, you see what they’ve done…it’s great. I love having that.”

Sense of humour

Mia “It’s also nice to be told what funny or stupid thing they did, laugh about it, because, they’re all kids.”

Communication

Ella “He comes back with stories, which has never happened in kinder. I used to drag the words out of him, but now he has actually started telling me what he’s done at school.” Anne “He would never participate before. Now he participates okay. They helped that. If they didn’t do that he would be in the corner playing with his trains again.” Kate “I knew emotionally, he just wasn’t ready whereas now I’m comfortable to say, yes, he’s ready now to go to a mainstream school.” Hannah “I thought, they’re not going to be able to deal with him. I couldn’t even imagine him sitting at a table for 30 seconds, let alone the whole day.”

Social interaction Emotional regulation

“Seems grown up” Behaviour

Maturity

Ella “He absolutely loves it. He seems grown up. He’s just like, not a baby anymore.”

Parent support

Sue “That’s what I’m going to miss the most is not having the support of the other parents.”

Teacher support

Mia “It’s been that extra support from the teachers.”

Reduced anxiety Creating options

Elise “It’s just made me more relaxed for next year thinking, well, he’s not going to be the child’s that’s struggling.” Sue “The only option I felt was to put him in a special school whereas now, I think, you know, I could have had options.”

Impact at home Anne “He will have at least four stories tonight with my husband. Because of them. They’re amazing.”

Trepidation

Ella “PrEPIC is so good and I know I’m very happy about that but he won’t have it next year. Is he going to be different in a mainstream setting? I don’t know, will he fit in? Will he cope?”

“Eased us and the kids into school”

findings of the study, and their relevance to speech pathologists, other allied health professionals, and educators who support children and parents during the transition to school. The PrEPIC transition program was identified to be foundational in the sense that it brought together multiple components of support, not only for the children, but also their parents. According to parents, key elements included an individualised approached to identifying and addressing children’s learning needs, the establishment of supportive and open communication channels between teachers and parents, and an intensive approach whereby children attended the program four days per week in the year prior to school. These elements (e.g., individualised approach, open communication) appear to be consistent with Marsh and Eapan’s (2017) recommendations for programs aimed at supporting the transition to school. However, the resource-intensive nature of the program means that replication in other educational settings is likely to be challenging. For speech pathologists and other professionals working to support children and

parents, the key implications appear to be the value of (a) helping parents, existing early intervention staff, and future teachers to establish open and effective avenues of communication; (b) embedding activities to boost children’s school readiness skills within existing programs ahead of the transition; and (c) seeking to do so in a way that will see children practising these skills repeatedly at home and in early childhood settings in the lead up to school. In addition to supporting children during the transition, the results indicate that the PrEPIC program led to a range of positive outcomes for parents. There is clear evidence that supporting children with social-communication and learning difficulties during the transition to school can be very challenging for parents (Chadwick & Kemp, 2000). Thus, the findings that parents felt more supported, less anxious, and are in a position to have increased choice regarding their children’s future schooling following the program, are encouraging. For speech pathologists and other professionals seeking to support similar outcomes in parents, apparent lessons to be learned from the PrEPIC program include (a) the need for people with experience in

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JCPSLP Volume 19, Number 3 2017

Journal of Clinical Practice in Speech-Language Pathology