Project EV-DES: Designing and Implementing an Online Home Support Program for Parents of Children with Developmental Retardation/Disability in Early Childhood

The aim of this project is aimed primarily at parents and then educators/experts of children diagnosed with developmental delay/deficiency in early childhood; To design the "Online Parent-at-Home Support (Project EV-DES)" Digital Platform, which aims to meet the needs of knowledge about the retardation/insufficiency of their children and the ability to cope with these situations, to support the psycho-social well-being of the parents and to strengthen the parents, and to evaluate the effectiveness of the platform. The project sought answers to two basic questions. First of all, it is aimed to determine the knowledge and skill needs of parents, especially for their children with special needs and themselves at home. The study stated that the majority of parents especially needed support in terms of better interaction with their child, supporting their child's social-emotional skills and supporting their child's communication skills. Written and visual contents have been prepared considering all these requirements, thousands of resources such as other Turkish-based brochures, guides, booklets, book links, useful links, videos, sites, legal regulations have been transformed into a platform with the logic of a digital library and accessed these resources with keyword writing. Efforts were made to provide easy access. Thousands of resources were uploaded to the platform in 10 basic special needs areas and made available to users. As of 30 December 2020, 1320 people have registered to the platform and 191 people have expressed their opinions on the platform. When the findings are examined, it is seen that over 80-90% user satisfaction regarding the platform is at a high level. When the open-ended opinions in the last item, which provides an independent response, are examined, it is seen that there are positive opinions and suggestions that support the quantitative data. As a result, in terms of the scope of the project, being the first and only in our country, it has quite original features and it is believed that it will have a widespread social and economic impact in terms of its results. In the context of the project, free digital access resource pools or libraries can be prepared, where similar projects can be carried out, especially on different or specific topics. While the target audience of this project is 0-6/8 years old, new platforms can be prepared based on the needs of older children and adults. New platforms can be prepared for special needs such as learning difficulties, which are not included in the scope of the project and are mostly seen in school.