Participation as a basis for developing early intervention outcomes.

PURPOSE This article describes how participation in activities/routines can be used as a basis for understanding children's communication and language skills and how that knowledge can be extended to collaborate with families and caregivers to develop meaningful early intervention outcomes. METHOD The approach is centered on children's use of communication and language skills to participate in typical activities/routines. Implementation of the approach is based on an understanding of children's performance abilities/disabilities and their use of those abilities to participate in family-identified activities/routines in their natural environments. Discussion and case examples illustrate how communication and language skills can enhance or enable participation in such activities. Family-centered procedures for gathering information about activities/routines from caregivers are described, and strategies for developing outcomes in collaboration with caregivers are presented. IMPLICATIONS Participation-based outcomes offer speech-language pathologists an option for embedding skills within important activities/routines, thereby promoting children's communication and language growth in natural contexts.