Telehealth for families of children with special needs: experts’ opinions

Abstract

Telehealth interventions (TI) are broadly defined as the use of information and communication technologies to deliver information, diagnosis, or educational services. While the use of TI was previously just a choice to support children with special needs and their families, they have become a necessity nowadays when performing face-to-face education and training practices are almost impossible. The current qualitative study aims at describing the opinions and recommendations of the experts toward the basic characteristics of TI, guidelines for successful practices, ethical considerations, potential problems, and solutions associated with TI process. Six experts experienced with implementing and conducting research on remote training and coaching participated in the semi-structured interviews that were transcribed and analyzed using content analysis. The analysis revealed four themes: (a) Characteristics of TI, (b) important points in TI, (c) potential problems, and (d) potential solutions. Overall, the findings may shed light on the general conceptual and terminological definition of TI, discussions regarding to feasibility of TI in Turkey, and effective TI practices. Also, the findings may guide future practitioners, researchers, or teachers in conducting or investigating the effectiveness of TI.