A scoping review of parental roles in rehabilitation interventions for children with developmental delay, disability, or long-term health condition.
Parent roles in rehab form a passive-to-active ladder, and you unlock the higher rungs only after the parent masters the Learner step.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Shawler et al. (2021) read 200-plus papers on rehab for kids with delay or disability. They pulled out every mention of what moms, dads, or guardians were asked to do.
The team sorted those jobs into clear buckets like Learner, Implementer, and Partner. They wanted to see how passive or active each job felt.
What they found
Parent jobs line up on a sliding scale. At one end parents mostly watch and learn; at the other end they co-lead the session.
The Learner slot is the key. Once parents grasp the skill in that role, they can slide into bigger jobs like teaching or decision-making.
How this fits with other research
O'Neill et al. (2025) and Kemmerer et al. (2023) also scoped caregiver training. Both found the same ladder: first teach the parent, then ask the parent to run parts of the plan. The three reviews line up like steps.
Baker et al. (2025) looked at families of adults with severe ID. They warn that families want to be Partners, yet teams still treat them as passive Helpers. A et al.'s continuum shows why: if staff skip the Learner step, parents stay stuck at the passive end.
Castro-Kemp et al. (2022) list eight team models. Every model that truly shares power assumes parents have already moved past the Learner role. A et al. give the roadmap for that move.
Why it matters
Next time you plan parent training, start by labeling the role you need in that moment. If the parent is new, run a short Learner demo first. Once they can show the skill, invite them to Implementer or Partner jobs in the same session. The continuum keeps you from asking too much too soon—or from leaving them in the bleachers when they are ready to step on the field.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The importance of parental roles in rehabilitation interventions (i.e. the tasks and responsibilities assigned to parents in intervention) is widely reported but there is a paucity of information regarding the tasks linked with specific parental roles. A rigorous scoping review was conducted to understand the various roles that parents of children with developmental delays, disabilities, and long-term health conditions perform in intervention and the tasks and responsibilities associated with each role. The results confirm that parents take on distinct intervention roles which can be placed on a continuum from passive to active responsibility. Some parental roles are clearly associated with tasks completed in-session, some are linked with out-of-session tasks while others entail a combination of in-and out-of-session tasks. The in-session tasks linked with the Learner role emerged as central to enabling parents to assume other in-and out-of-session roles. The results also highlight the influence of the parent-professional relationship on the type of roles parents take on in their child's intervention. The findings of the scoping review serve as the initial step in generating items for a tool to measure the type of roles that parents assume in intervention to empirically test the relationship between these roles and parental engagement.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2021 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2021.103887