Emotional intelligence and participatory practices with the family in early intervention

A current concern in the discipline of Early Intervention is to improve intervention and collaboration with the family, based on appropriate participatory practices. Our objective was to verify if certain emotional intelligence skills, in professionals, can be linked to a greater or lesser exercise of participatory practices with the family. Participated 420 professionals, 25 men and 387 women, from 13 Autonomous Communities of Spain. They completed two instruments: Trait Meta-MoodScale (TMMS-24) from the Salovey and Mayer research group, translated by Fernandez-Berrocal and Extremera (2006); Inventory on Professional Practice in Early Intervention (IPPAT), created for this purpose. The results show that Early Care professionals perform participatory practices in their interventions and have high levels of emotional skills. However, we found significant differences in these participatory practices based on their scores on emotional intelligence traits. The results are also discussed in terms of their implications for the training of future professionals in Early Intervention.