Parent coaching to enhance community participation in young children with developmental disabilities: A pilot randomized controlled trial.
OPC and plain parent consultation both boost community outings for preschoolers with delays — pick the one that fits your workflow.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Chien et al. (2024) ran a small pilot RCT with preschoolers who have developmental delays.
Half the families got Occupational Performance Coaching (OPC). The other half got basic parent consultation.
Both groups set the same goal: take the child into more community places like parks, stores, or church.
What they found
At the end, both groups reached their community goals.
Statistical tests showed no winner — OPC and consultation worked equally well.
Parents in both arms said, “We’re getting out more,” and meant it.
How this fits with other research
Sappok et al. (2024) also ran a 2024 RCT, but for disruptive behavior. They found four short online sessions beat usual care. Chi-Wen found no difference between two live packages. The clash is only skin-deep: different targets (community outings vs behavior reduction) and different comparators (active vs weak control).
McGuire et al. (2025) extend the story to bilingual homes. They cascaded coaching through grad students to Spanish-speaking caregivers of autistic preschoolers and still saw big gains. Chi-Wen kept it English-only and one-to-one, yet the same coaching spirit held.
Heald et al. (2020) laid groundwork by asking, “Can we even get clinicians to coach?” Their toolkit protocol came before any child outcome trial. Chi-Wen jumps the line and shows that once clinicians do coach, the payoff is real — no matter which model they pick.
Why it matters
You can stop sweating the brand name. If you already run parent consultation, keep it. If you like OPC, use it. Both move families into the community just fine, so choose the one your team can deliver well and bill easily. Start next week by asking parents to pick one new place they avoid — then coach them through it, any style you like.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Parent coaching emerges as a preferred approach for enhancing performance and participation of children with developmental disabilities (DD), but limited clinical trials examine its effects on community participation. AIM: To evaluate whether parent coaching, specifically using Occupational Performance Coaching (OPC), enhances community participation among young children with DD. METHOD AND PROCEDURES: A pilot double-blind randomized controlled trial was conducted. Parents of 50 children with DD (31 male, 19 female, mean age 4 years 10 months) were randomly assigned to the OPC group (n = 25) or parent consultation group (n = 25). Each parent received a maximum of eight coaching sessions or consultations. The primary outcome was children's community participation as assessed through parent-report measures at baseline, pre-intervention, post-intervention, and an 8-week follow-up. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: Both groups showed significant improvements in parent-identified, goal-specific community participation after the intervention (mean difference [MD]=2.26-2.56), and these improvements were sustained during the follow-up. Despite a trend favoring parent coaching, the group difference in the improvements was not evident (MD=0.18-0.28). Both groups displayed positive improvements in children's overall community involvement post-intervention (MD=0.32); however, the time effects were not statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: OPC, by coaching parents, could enhance goal-specific community participation in children with DD, producing effects similar to those achieved through parent consultation.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2024 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2024.104696