The Development, Individual Differences, Relationship-based (DIR®) Model, co-created by Drs. Serena Wieder and Stanley Greenspan, has always centered parents and caregivers as the essential relationships that underpin development.
Facilitating Attuned Interactions (FAN) is a conceptual framework and training model for improving the communication skills of professionals who serve families. Developed by Linda Gilkerson, PhD of Erikson Institute, FAN has been used across the US and internationally as a tool for helping professionals feel more connected and responsive to families.

Combining FAN with the DIR® Model amplifies practitioners’ resources for supporting families. Professionals feel more effective in their work and parents are ready to read their children’s cues and know at any given moment how to respond to their needs.

The goal of the DIR+FAN Training is to build professional capacity in reflective practice to strengthen our relationships with parents, supporting DIR’s parent-mediated intervention and coaching model. With DIR+FAN, DIR® practitioners can attune to the parents’ experience of the DIR® Model, while holding parents’ concerns about a child’s development, challenging behavior, and other concerns at the center of their practice. This innovative training builds better relationships between professionals and parents, and ultimately between parents and their children, because it helps providers adapt to clients’ needs in the moment and stay emotionally in tune. It also helps professionals reflect on the meaning of a client’s behavior, and it helps them find more compassion for themselves through self-regulation.

The DIR+FAN training originated in a special initiative developed through a partnership between Profectum’s Senior Advisor and co-creator of the DIR® Model Serena Wieder and FAN creator Linda Gilkerson of the Erikson Institute, along with Profectum’s Faculty members Rebecca Berg, Socorro Cornejo, and Kristin McNally.