The family spends much more time with the child than the team. When they understand what is being worked on and why, the skills learned in the session appear sooner at home. When they are left without news, trust decreases, even with the child making progress.

Three communication moments

  1. Routine: a short message after sessions, when there is something the family needs to know or do.
  2. Plan update: when goals are added, removed or change steps.
  3. Feedback: after each assessment or reassessment, with time for questions.

Agree with the family, right at the start, on the frequency and channel for each. Predictability is worth more than volume.

What to share from the data

Families do not need to see every trial recorded. They need to understand the direction:

  • What the child has already learned since the last conversation.
  • What is being worked on now, in everyday language.
  • What still needs attention, without alarm and without minimizing.

A simple progress chart by domain, with a sentence explaining it, usually works better than a table. Show strengths first.

How to ask for help at home

  • Choose one or two skills at a time for the family to practice.
  • Explain the concrete situation: "at bath time, ask them to hand you the towel".
  • Say how to respond when it goes right and when it does not.
  • Ask, in the next conversation, how it went. The family's response is also data.

Handling internal information

Not everything the team discusses needs to reach the family the same way. Open hypotheses, technical discussions and the therapist's personal notes stay with the team until they become a decision. Define, for each record, who can see it.

The family in Proaba

In Proaba, family members have their own access and see only what the team marks as visible to the family: notes, reports and selected moments from recordings. A voice note from a meeting can become a "Plan Update for the Family," which the therapist reviews before saving, and the progress dashboard generates a PDF with the strengths and domains in development to take to the feedback session.