Visual schedules in the home for children with developmental disabilities.

Visual supports are often used during interventions for individuals with developmental disabilities to increase independence in the home (Rutherford et al., 2020). Previous reviews of the visual support literature for individuals with developmental and/or intellectual disabilities suggest that visual supports are effective at increasing independence with tasks, such as daily living skills, in the home for children with developmental disabilities; however, caregiver-implemented visual supports may produce different outcomes than non-caregiver implemented visual supports. The purpose of Study One was to synthesize the research on caregiver-implemented visual supports in the home for individuals with developmental disabilities. This search yielded 16 studies which evaluated the use of caregiver-implemented visual support interventions for individuals with developmental disabilities in the home setting. We evaluated the included articles against the What Works Clearinghouse Single-Case Design Standards (WWC, 2017, 2020) and the social validity quality indicators (Horner et al., 2005; Reichow et al., 2008). Across these studies, researchers identified two predominantly used visual supports, visual schedules and social interaction supports. The findings of this literature review support the use of caregiver-implemented visual supports for children with developmental disabilities. Furthermore, the results endorse the use of visual supports for promoting independence in routines and for decreasing the amount of challenging behavior during these routines. In Study Two, researchers evaluated the efficacy of coaching caregivers to teach their child to follow high-tech visual schedules to promote the independent completion of leisure activities via videoconferencing technology. Further, researchers explored the extent to which children continue to complete these leisure activities in the absence of their caregiver. The results from this study indicate that researchers can effectively coach caregivers via videoconferencing technology to teach their child to follow high-tech visual schedules to learn how to complete leisure activities and demonstrates that individuals will continue to complete these leisure activities even when caregiver support is withdrawn. In Study Three, researchers conducted a phenomenological case study to better understand caregiver experiences with teaching their child follow visual schedules to complete leisure activities in the home. Researchers conducted semi-structured interviews and collected data through field and personal notes using the theoretical framework guided by the works of Wolf (1978), Horner et al. (2005), and Reichow et al. (2008). Interviews provided the researcher the opportunity to understand the essence of this phenomenon from the caregivers’ point of view and to describe the meaning of their experiences (Fox, 2009).