Elaine, T. H. F.¹, & Zhooriyati, S. M.²

Department of Psychology,

Faculty of Social Sciences and Liberal Arts,

UCSI University Kuala Lumpur,

56000 Cheras, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

¹Email: ¹elainelol96@gmail.com;

²zhooriyati@ucsiuniversity.edu.my;

yati_2386@yahoo.com

Abstract

Early intervention services are a range of different programmes included different types of therapy and education that aimed to help and support children with developmental delays or other specific health conditions. The early intervention services are helpful to improve children development and adaptability, enhance family capability in handling the special needs children and increase family and children participation in society. There are various challenges faced in the early intervention programmes (EIP) such as not enough special needs educators, occupational therapists and speech therapists and lack of financial supports, facilities and resources to implement the EIP. Besides that, there were parents who have limited knowledge on the services, therapy for their special needs children and put all the responsibilities of their children’s progress on the teachers. Above all, dealing with children’s misbehaviours also one of the challenges. Therefore, this paper aims to discover the effectiveness of early special education, the challenges faced by the special needs educators and the coping strategies for improving the situation in the early intervention services (early special education) in Malaysia. To meet the objectives of this study, a qualitative research using phenomenological approach has conducted. Total five special needs teachers who fulfilled the criteria were recruited by using purposive sampling. The participants were those teachers in a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) early intervention centre in Johor, Malaysia, with psychology major and early childhood education major. The data were collected by using a set of predetermined semi-structured interview questions to get in-depth information from the participants. The interview questions are adapted and carefully phrased from the previous interview questions that developed by Moore (2012), Coyle (2011) and Kiyuba and Tukur (2014) and set out in order to get more in-depth details from the participants. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the collected data. The findings of this study revealed that improvement in attention and behaviours, self-care skills, social interaction skills of special needs children are the effectiveness of early intervention services. Besides that, providing knowledge and happiness to the parents and preparing for integration into kindergarten and future schooling are also some of the effectiveness. This study found that the challenges faced by the special needs educators in the EIP are lack of training and resources for the EIP, lack of cooperation from the parents, dealing with children’s misbehaviours, and lack of collaboration from therapists and kindergarten teachers. With these challenges faced, it might prevent the special needs educators to provide effective services to the children. The participant in this study recommended to improve the situation of the EIP in Malaysia by providing training, offering more special education in the university in Malaysia, more collaboration between EIP teachers with therapists, parents or kindergarten teachers, financial supports from the government and public and to have more teachers with commitments in this field. The implications of this study consist of contributing significantly to the community by making people understand the effectiveness and importance of sending special needs children to the EIP. Besides that, it also provides information about the challenges or situations that the EIP teachers in the Non-Profit Organization (NGO) faced and provides recommendations for improving the EIP situations faced. Future researcher is suggested to examine the perceptions of the EIP teachers in both private and NGO sector. Besides that, the future researcher also could recruit the EIP teachers who work in the NGO settings all around Malaysia instead of just one area. The future researchers could focus on the perceptions of the therapists in this field such as occupational therapists, speech therapists or others.

Keywords: early intervention services, early special education, special needs children