Abstract
A young child's social and emotional development, which is a positive sense of self and of others, can only be developed in the context of relationships. The first purpose of this article is to describe a relationship-focused approach to early intervention, Promoting First Relationship. The second purpose is to present some encouraging initial results from a research and training project using the Promoting First Relationship approach to improve the relationship-focused skills of personnel serving young children, birth to 3, with disabilities and their families. Study results show an increase in relationship-focused staff practices as a result of training. In addition, results show an increase in parent sensitivity and responsiveness and a corresponding increase in child contingency and responsiveness during parent-child interactions from pre- to posttest.