Faculty Advisor(s)
Lori Charney
Abstract
First Steps: Supporting Infant Development and Family Bonding is a capstone project that was developed to bring awareness to the importance of development within the first few months of life, as well as exploring occupational therapy’s role with this population. The project focused on areas of program development, education, and clinical skill development, which were all developed following the completion of a scoping review. Educational materials, including a video library, were created for families to continue to access materials following the completion of the experience. These videos covered topics including safe sleep, milestones, tummy time, and more. Additionally, two sessions of the pediatric workshop series were run to educate occupational therapy students on intervention strategies for working with families transitioning into parenting roles. Individual educational sessions were implemented in partnership with Pathways Pregnancy Center to provide low-income families with evidence-based education on infant care and development. Throughout the process of planning sessions, health literacy principles were considered and applied to all topics to ensure that the material was understandable by the intended audience. Topics included safe sleep, tummy time, milestones, play development, and more. Lastly, the doctoral candidate was mentored by two occupational therapists who work directly with infants and families using a family-centered care model for service delivery. Through this experience, the doctoral candidate was able to refine skills related to cue-based infant care, documentation, goal writing, clinical reasoning, and more.
Publication Date
2026
Document Type
Poster
Department
Occupational Therapy
Keywords
infant, family-centered care, program development, education, cue based care, scoping review
Disciplines
Medicine and Health Sciences | Occupational Therapy | Rehabilitation and Therapy
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Evans, Katana M., "First Steps: Supporting Infant Development and Family Bonding" (2026). Entry Level Occupational Therapy Doctoral Capstone Projects Class of 2026. 2.
https://digitalcommons.misericordia.edu/otd_capstone2026/2