Act Early & Grow: Early Childhood Revisions & Updates

Slides

Download the slides for Act Early and Grow as a .pdf

Transcript

00:00:00:00 – 00:00:38:11
Unknown
All right. Well, it’s really nice to be here again. I’m Janet Kilbourne, and I am the Vermont point person for the Kdka’s. Learn the Signs Act Early Campaign, which is a public health campaign to make sure that all children are identified for developmental and behavioral concerns as soon as possible, and that parents and caregivers have information on early childhood development, social emotional development as early as possible so that they are better equipped to advocate on behalf of their child and get extra help for their child.

00:00:38:13 – 00:01:18:07
Unknown
Okay, So these are some of the objectives of my section today where I’m sharing with you about the updates to the learn the science milestones we really want. And you guys are certainly preaching to the choir here, but to everybody to recognize that children are sometimes not identified early. And I want you to I’m sure you understand the system of care in Vermont, but we’re really trying to trying to raise awareness of our system in Vermont and what is our early identification and developmental screening system, and then understand these revisions and why they were made.

00:01:18:09 – 00:01:44:23
Unknown
Okay, Why monitor development? So these are just some national statistics, but certainly pretty concerning that one in four children. What can you tell me is that, well, maybe somebody just needs to mute. I think we’ve just taken care of that. Sorry, Jane. It’s okay. No worries that up to one in four children are at risk of developmental behavior or social emotional delay.

00:01:45:00 – 00:02:12:23
Unknown
And I’m sure that’s even higher now as a result of COVID. And you all are working directly with probably some of these kiddos with the impact of this on social isolation and lack of social and play opportunities. So also, one in six children, 3 to 17 has a developmental disability. And then of course, these increasing high statistics for autism spectrum disorder.

00:02:13:00 – 00:02:37:06
Unknown
Okay, so here’s a graphic of a of an early identification system that you see that is top one. Developmental monitoring is really a whole universal whole population approach, very upstream, very prevention oriented, and often a first step before formal developmental screening over here. And Cooper in a minute is going to tell you more about our Help Me Girl system.

00:02:37:06 – 00:03:04:18
Unknown
But we work very, very hard to promote universal developmental screening across early education environments. So it’s across medical homes in early care and education settings with CIS and also in the families home care, home visiting. And then we have our early intervention system, part B and part C six, and then supported services, which you are are part of that network.

00:03:04:18 – 00:03:37:24
Unknown
And of course diagnostic evaluations are in there as well. So what’s the difference between monitoring versus formal screening? So monitoring is really, again, that whole population prevention approach that can be family driven, it can support the need for additional screening. It’s also called surveillance and medical homes. And the learn the science materials are correlated with each well-child visits so that developmental milestones are written to correspond to the ages for well-child visits.

00:03:38:01 – 00:04:06:16
Unknown
And then screening is you use a validated screening tool like the ages and stages. It also has milestones, but it’s based on real research administered by profession tools, and it helps determine, of course, if further diagnostic or evaluations are needed. So these are some of the new materials that the CDC has come out with. They have a new look, new colors.

00:04:06:18 – 00:04:27:22
Unknown
Everything has been updated. I’m going to tell you about the specific updates. But in Vermont, we have some older materials and you may be more familiar with those. And it’s fine to keep using those until we use them up. But here’s the Web address if you want to order these new materials. So we have checklists right here. These these milestone booklets.

00:04:27:23 – 00:04:47:21
Unknown
Here’s a picture. Here’s the older of it’s blurry for you guys, but the older one that we have in Vermont and we as a little girl, we customized it with help me girl information. I can’t really show you, but this has the information that’s on the checklist inside of it, but a little more extensive. And then the tracker app.

00:04:47:23 – 00:05:20:23
Unknown
So the tracker app, I can’t see you all. I wish I could, but I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the Learn the Signs Tracker app, but it is really cool and I would love for you to promote it with your families and your workplaces because it’s a very dynamic tool that has interactive milestone checklists for ages two through five has photos and videos demonstrating the milestones, lots of learning activities, fun activities to support children’s development, and then reminders for appointments.

00:05:21:04 – 00:05:45:10
Unknown
And you can email the doctor. You can take a developmental checklist for your child’s specific age and email the doctor or email your grandmother. So it is very comprehensive, as in English or Spanish, and this is how you download it. And I’ll give one caveat that it is in still in process with these revisions. So there CDC is also update all the photos and videos and adding more.

00:05:45:12 – 00:06:05:08
Unknown
So that has not been completed. So if you download it and look at it has a lot of good written content, but it doesn’t have what I consider that most dynamic feature. So you may have to wait a few more months on that, but it is coming. This is like the developmental checklist for 18 months. It’s like a one pager.

00:06:05:08 – 00:06:35:03
Unknown
You can download it online at the CDC site and this is a more streamlined look now and has more social emotional milestones is something each developmental age has more based on these revisions. And then it also has little screen reminders. And here’s the 18 month screening for Developmental Reminder for developmental screening and autism screening. And then these are older materials which we still are disseminating.

00:06:35:05 – 00:06:57:01
Unknown
And you can get these delivered to your school or if you want them for home visits, if you’re a CIS provider, you just contact your local maternal and child health coordinator. And if you need to figure out who that is, please, you can just email this registry, email or you can email me and my emails at the end of the PowerPoint.

00:06:57:03 – 00:07:21:21
Unknown
I have a new board book for babies from CDC is really cute. And this is our Help Me Girl rat card that gives information for families on how to contact us. We did a pretty large project translating materials. Again, this is the older brochure with that older look, but we do have Vermont translations in nine languages and they’re on the Vermont Family Network site.

00:07:21:23 – 00:08:09:01
Unknown
If folks are working with families who are speaking other languages. Okay. So let’s dig in a little bit to these milestone revisions. So developmental monitoring we talked about really helps with early identification and kind of that upstream protective factor, if you will. It’s really increasing early childhood understanding among parents, families, caregivers and developmental promotion. So just promoting healthy development, celebrating milestones, really understanding what emerging skills are taking place, how to promote those skills and support them with learning activities or and then again, building that family relationship and trusting relationships with providers is a lot easier.

00:08:09:07 – 00:08:31:01
Unknown
When we train child care providers, we talk a lot about if you’re having regular conversations about a child’s development with families, it’s so much easier to talk about if you have a concern or if something needs a little extra nudge like speech development, right? Like often needs a little bit of extra support, some targeted strategies or some sign language or whatnot.

00:08:31:03 – 00:08:55:04
Unknown
It’s so much easier to talk about that if all along you’ve been talking about that child’s development from the time they were born. So and in Vermont, we really promote screening in this larger context that it’s not just about the child’s about. It’s about the child’s environment, it’s about the family environment, the social conditions that impact health, social determinants of health and health equity.

00:08:55:10 – 00:09:23:07
Unknown
And by helping parents understand social and emotional or all kinds of different domains of development, we’re really putting them in the driver’s seat so that they can advocate for their child, they can reach out and get extra support. They can more effectively take a developmental screen or talk to their child’s pediatrician and also predict what’s coming. This is so hard as parents, right, when everything changes in the child’s development is something new and it throws you off.

00:09:23:07 – 00:09:55:21
Unknown
And if you understand a little bit more that there are these periods of development, what’s to come, What’s a child working on that can really strengthen that parent child relationship and an overall mental health? I want to bring your attention to this really cool new toolkit, if you will, the called a roadmap for Advancing Family Engage Developmental monitoring was developed by the Help Me Grow National Center and the Associated Center for University Disabilities.

00:09:55:23 – 00:10:30:12
Unknown
Getting that name wrong, I always get that wrong, but they’re great partners. And there were two folks from Vermont, myself included, on the on the team, to give input and help develop this roadmap. But it’s wonderful and it’s very family centered, very much focused on equity, putting families in the driver’s seat and talking about what’s going well with development and really taking into account environmental and risk factors so that we’re helping families get what they need so they can do the best job for this this third developing child.

00:10:30:14 – 00:10:58:00
Unknown
So please, please check that out. Okay. So why does CDC decide to revise these milestones? Well, they have been used for over 15 years with lots of feedback from lots of types of professional groups, from provider groups, a couple age groups and checklists were missing in the 15 and 30 months. There was some pretty vague language like may begin to do this.

00:10:58:02 – 00:11:28:11
Unknown
There was there were like a checkbox of milestones that might have been missing kind of red flags, if you will. But how many before it was really a concern that should be acted on and the original milestones were things that most children should do, and that’s like about 50%. And now these have been revised so that over 75% of children should be doing the new the new milestones that are that have been published.

00:11:28:13 – 00:11:50:07
Unknown
So that makes it much more difficult to have that wait and see approach. If only over 50% of kids are doing it, you might say, well, this child’s just a little slow. But if 75% of kids are doing it and this this child isn’t, then we probably should do something about it. So this was the developmental expertise that went into the revisions.

00:11:50:07 – 00:12:17:09
Unknown
You can see it’s a very diverse group of folks with a parent representative SLPs, general, pediatrician, a lot of practicing folks. And these were the criteria that they developed to really revise the older milestones against. They included open ended questions, which I think is wonderful. Is that part of it? The milestones now are asking the parent, Do you have any concerns?

00:12:17:11 – 00:12:43:09
Unknown
What are you most worried about? Things like that. They got rid of warning signs, made it much easier for families with different social, cultural and ethnic backgrounds, So they widened the field of who they feel they feel tested These things with in terms of cultures and languages spoken. And let’s see real plain language, no jargon, five to seventh grade reading level, family friendly.

00:12:43:11 – 00:13:17:23
Unknown
Again, different education levels, income levels and racial groups that these were tested with just additional features. Again, the open ended questions and that a lot more tips and activities for learning or for early age promoting early development including that social, emotional and early relational health which is so important. Okay, so here’s some of the open ended questions. Is there anything your child does or does not do that concerns you?

00:13:18:00 – 00:13:44:20
Unknown
And has your child lost any skills he or she once had? And those two questions really encompass all the warning signs that were in that previous iteration of milestones. So much more simple. If a child is losing skills, we always want to we’re always concerned about that. Right. But the parents really know this is really honoring that. Parents know that the parents have concerns and we need to really listen to those concerns.

00:13:44:22 – 00:14:15:18
Unknown
And then also any premature or special health care needs. If you want to know more about the revisions, there’s an article here, the link to the article about the revision process and then help me go National compiled a bunch of materials on their website that’s really helpful in understanding the process and the utility of it and recommend that as well.

00:14:15:20 – 00:14:37:00
Unknown
I think I’m happy to take questions now, or you could put them in the chat or we can wait till the end. And Cooper, my colleague here from Help Me Girl is going to tell you a little bit about help me grow as, again, part of that system here for monitoring, screening and connecting to services like like the services you all provide.

00:14:37:02 – 00:15:04:16
Unknown
Yeah. Thank you, Janet. So my name is Cooper. I’m the program manager at Help Me Grow Vermont. So I work in and help you grow from Roots Resource Hub. And I’m going to shift gears a little bit today. I’m just now and we’re going to talk a little bit about help me grow Vermont and how we we support families throughout the state and the resources that we can offer to some of your family.

00:15:04:16 – 00:15:18:11
Unknown
So, you know, our vision is really and help me grow as the one stop shop for connecting families to services and supports throughout the state.

00:15:18:13 – 00:15:42:19
Unknown
Everyone has probably heard that phrase Children, Our future. I know is that really corny to bring that up in a presentation? Absolutely. But the reason why I do so is because they think it really is at the core of how help me grow sees this system. We know that capable children help build a foundation for a prosperous and sustainable society.

00:15:42:21 – 00:16:11:15
Unknown
So our hope is by focusing on the specific early childhood age group that we can have this much larger societal impact. I think it’s really important to kind of center that as we’re thinking about what Help Me Girl can do to offer your families. And this work is really based in the science of brain architecture. We know that these early years of a child’s life are incredibly, incredibly impactful on future development.

00:16:11:17 – 00:16:47:10
Unknown
And we also know that emotion and cognition are actually these two really profoundly interrelated processes. So what that means is that for children, having these these strong, nurturing, consistent relationships in early childhood become that much more important. So, you know, it’s excuse me, sorry isn’t working. So, you know, obviously, as we’re all aware, not all children have positive, you know, positive experiences in early childhood.

00:16:47:12 – 00:17:14:20
Unknown
That’s just a fact. Right. Whether it’s poverty or food insecurity or things like trauma, isolation. And and there’s some really big important factors that lead to chronic stress in households. And what we know is that they, you know, this chronic stress can wreak havoc on family functioning. And it’s a disruption to early development. And so I think this is really where developmental screening comes in.

00:17:14:20 – 00:17:35:22
Unknown
And I know Janet talked a little bit about that in her in her start of the PowerPoint. And we’ll talk a little bit more later about our specific developmental screening work. But when we think about developmental screening, you know, I think the importance is really that these are family led tools where we get we’re getting that family engagement.

00:17:35:24 – 00:17:59:17
Unknown
Families are learning about their child’s development, They’re learning positive parenting techniques, and they’re becoming a part of that conversation, a part of that process, and making sure that they have the tools that they need to support their child. So we went on here. So who to help me grow Vermont serve. So the answer to that is really easy.

00:17:59:17 – 00:18:27:16
Unknown
It’s any family in Vermont with children under age eight or anyone who is pregnant. Anyone who’s expecting this is a free service. And as I mentioned, there’s no eligibility criteria outside of children in that age group. And so I think that’s a really important piece for providers. We welcome you to refer directly to us. We have a referral form that’s linked right here on the slide.

00:18:27:18 – 00:18:50:04
Unknown
It’s also really readily available on our website. And so if you have families who might need a little extra support, whether that’s getting getting connected to one of these resources on the screen here or something else, we’re really happy to help support you and help support your family is when we receive a referral. We do our best to respond within the next business day.

00:18:50:06 – 00:19:25:22
Unknown
So that’s the amount of time between the time we receive the referral and the amount of time to reach out to the family in. And then we try to help get families connected to all different types of resources. And as I mentioned, so just some of the examples perinatal support, treatment and resources and children’s integrated services. So that’s maybe connection to early intervention and maybe families looking for connection of home visiting treatments and supports around substance use disorder, developmental screening, child care and all sorts of basic needs resources, including food, housing, etc..

00:19:25:22 – 00:19:58:17
Unknown
So there’s a wide range of needs and a lot of them are often often overlapping, as I’m sure people know from their experience. Besides referrals, we also do take calls, texts and emails, so people reach out to us directly and we take calls not only from the families themselves, but we do also receive calls from providers. So sometimes maybe you have a client on your, you know, who you’re dealing with, who you’re not sure if this will really follow up with a referral process or that they’d want to engage in that.

00:19:58:17 – 00:20:17:07
Unknown
But you want to get a little more information to be able to support them with. So maybe you give us a call and talk through that situation a little bit and we’ll try to help kind of and provide those resources to you so you can support that family. So we try to be really, really flexible. We know every family is different and we know that often families have a lot going on.

00:20:17:07 – 00:20:43:21
Unknown
So we want to make that that process really easy for them. And a really important part of our process is that follow up process. So every single person that we talk to is going to be offered a follow up. And so that’s a really big part of our work. Actually, in 2022, we had almost double the amount of outgoing calls from our resource hub as we did incoming calls.

00:20:43:23 – 00:21:04:07
Unknown
So increasingly that’s becoming more and more where we’re devoting our resources as a staff, just because most people do tend to want to follow up just for my my anecdotal experience. And that’s, I think, a really vital part of this system and if you refer to is one of the beauties is that we will also include you in that follow up process.

00:21:04:07 – 00:21:29:23
Unknown
So this is kind of what that’s talked about here. Whether we get connected to a family and we’re able to help support them, whether we get connected to a family and there’s still some challenges or whether we just weren’t able to reach them whatsoever. We’re going to keep you a part of that process. We’re going to look you in, give you a call, let you know, hey, here’s here’s what happened, here’s what where we’re stuck or haven’t been able to get through to the family.

00:21:30:00 – 00:21:47:15
Unknown
And that allows you to do your job so much better. Right? Next time you have contact with that family, you can tell them, hey, I talked to someone to help me grow and here’s what they said. And I think, you know, we know that all of the a lot of these systems are very challenging, especially for someone who’s never maybe engaged with them for the first time.

00:21:47:15 – 00:22:12:04
Unknown
And so having as many supports and as many people who can have that inside information and being like, oh, did you get through to two children’s integrated services and have you set up an evaluation like some of that language is really helpful to be equipped with so that you can help equip the family for those processes. So a little bit about how we meet the need.

00:22:12:06 – 00:22:34:00
Unknown
And one of the things that’s really cool is that we partner with Vermont too, and one very, very close partner of ours, and we have a shared database of resources with them. So we any resource that a family would at an individual make it connected to through the app is connected to three, two, one, one. Excuse me. They can also get connected to you through us.

00:22:34:01 – 00:23:03:22
Unknown
And that’s a huge, huge help. We’re really thankful for that partnership. And we also do have a kind of help me grow specific database as well. So some very specialized resources, which we’ll talk a little bit about later. All in all, we have over 3000 resources in our database, so that’s a lot of information at our disposal. We when we talk to families, we do our best to kind of get to the root of the need.

00:23:03:24 – 00:23:26:03
Unknown
So get to the bottom of what they’re dealing with. And we’re trying to find resources that meet the complexity of a client’s need. And sometimes it’s it’s multiple things. So, you know, one an example is I had a a family well, I was a single mom who reached out to me back in late fall, and she reached out to our resource hub.

00:23:26:03 – 00:23:46:15
Unknown
And she was she had just moved to Vermont with her daughter and she was trying to get figure out where to get some help for Christmas because the holidays are right around the corner. And as I said, she had just moved here. So she was kind of still trying to figure out the systems. And as we were talking, you know, it became clear that there are some other things that she was also trying to figure out.

00:23:46:15 – 00:24:04:16
Unknown
You know, she was struggling with figuring out where to get personal care items. And that’s one that, you know, for those who know, like can be kind of hidden in certain programs, often you have to find the right food bank and they’re dependent on availability. So it can be challenging, especially if you you don’t you you’re you’re just new to the state.

00:24:04:16 – 00:24:31:17
Unknown
You don’t have these preexisting relationships. And so that was one thing that we kind of helped her try to get connected with. And then also as we were talking over time and she let us know that there were some behavioral challenges with her daughter that she was kind of struggling with and was needing a little support with. And so we ended up offering that she do a social emotional screening on the Ask You online, which she did with her daughter.

00:24:31:17 – 00:24:55:20
Unknown
And after we we receive those results in and reviewed them and we give her a callback and so we ended up doing a referral to essential early education with the family so that they could get connected with the supports through the school district. And the one really nice thing about the follow up process is we were able to follow along as that process evolved and able to provide support as that was unfolding.

00:24:55:20 – 00:25:15:24
Unknown
So that was really awesome. And I think, you know, one reason I break out that story is just because for every family, the way that we support them is super, super different. So, you know, there may be a family where just one call and all of those needs or are all like identify the first thing and then maybe several calls.

00:25:16:01 – 00:25:42:20
Unknown
And, you know, most of the time there’s more than one overlapping need. And we’re going to do our best to try to get to the bottom of that. So that’s kind of a little bit about how we’re how we’re striving to meet that need. So here’s a little bit about and Spark delivered campaign. Now, the super delivered campaign is one of the health department’s campaigns from 2020 to its goals launched in April last year.

00:25:42:22 – 00:26:15:06
Unknown
And it’s a way that we’re partnering together as a way to offer supports and to new and expectant parents and related to to perinatal anxiety disorders. We often think about it as also postpartum postpartum anxiety and depression. So through this work, the health department on their website has a a web form submission where folks can go in and they can request to get in contact with the government.

00:26:15:06 – 00:26:40:11
Unknown
That’s very basic information. Name town and a means of contact and then we will reach out directly, comes directly into our email inbox and we’ll reach out and see how we can support them without that kind of treatment. As I mentioned before, you know, Help Me Grow has some very specific resources in our database. A lot of those are are related to perinatal disorder.

00:26:40:11 – 00:27:02:01
Unknown
We have a wealth of therapists who specialize in this time period that we have in our database. So if folks are wanting to get connected with a therapist, we can help with that. And we also have support groups that focus on perinatal mood, perinatal period, excuse me, and we’ll help them get connected to other, you know, broader resources.

00:27:02:01 – 00:27:30:02
Unknown
So, for example, Postpartum Support International has a whole host of resources. So a lot of different options depending on what the family is going through, what they’re looking for. And I always like to fight for this. And it’s not just necessarily the birthing parent. There’s also we work with non birthing parents as well. Really, anyone who’s struggling in that that prenatal and postnatal period is welcome to to get connected with us.

00:27:30:04 – 00:27:53:20
Unknown
And so that’s a little bit on that. And then another big piece of our work that I always like to highlight for people is our, our work with children’s integrated services. One of the things we do a lot is help get families connected with this, with children’s integrated services. And and, you know, we know that often families have this kind of complex array of needs.

00:27:53:22 – 00:28:20:24
Unknown
And we also know that it’s really natural as a parent to have some developmental concerns. Right. It’s you know, I think Deanna was getting into it earlier. It’s a scary time sometimes. And if you don’t have that knowledge or if you don’t know, to predict, to expect some of those changes, it can be scary. And so what we try to do is whenever there are concerns that a family brings up about their child and how they’re developing, we’re going to try to arm them with that support, with that knowledge.

00:28:21:03 – 00:28:44:15
Unknown
And if there needs to be next steps that need to happen, we’re going to help get them connected to those. And whether that’s, you know, a referral directly to children’s integrated services, whether they’re there needing just to start with like a developmental screening, we’re going to try to help meet that need and support them through that process. So with that, I think I’m going to hand it back off to Janet.

00:28:44:15 – 00:29:12:18
Unknown
Janet, feel free to there’s anything I missed. Feel free to go ahead and add in and and let me know if anyone has questions. Oh, that was awesome. Thank you. COOPER Yeah, I think part of our quality improvement work is trying to build a stronger connection to science programs, and particularly focusing on referring to home visiting programs and that every family deserves a home VISITOR Right?

00:29:12:18 – 00:29:35:20
Unknown
And it’s it’s a nice time to have that extra support and really normalizing that for families and offering a person to come to their home and building that connection between the telephone support, health and care coordination, help me grow offers, and the real person in the community can come in and continue the screening. Referring and connecting to resource work.

00:29:35:22 – 00:29:58:02
Unknown
That’s so important. Okay, So I’m just going to finish us up here with the little data about help me grow. We have a new report card right here is this link. Please check it out. It’s a lot of work that happened during the pandemic and we’re a little bit a year in arrears with our data because of the pandemic.

00:29:58:04 – 00:30:25:06
Unknown
But there’s some pretty significant work that was done here is a graph on the calls and referrals that we received. You can see that we referred we received about over 3000 calls and referrals and we made over 4000 referrals and almost as many ongoing calls or follow up calls as incoming calls. So there’s a lot of care coordination going on at home.

00:30:25:06 – 00:30:53:01
Unknown
We grow a lot of following up with families, and that’s where we often build that relationship and kind of uncover additional needs. And then the smaller subsets are families that share demographic information. Their child becomes kind of a client in our system. If you will, and those families can come in and out of different periods. Sometimes we don’t hear from them for months and they come back and but some of these other callers can remain anonymous.

00:30:53:03 – 00:31:22:10
Unknown
So that’s why you see cetera, sort of a large change in that data there. Okay. So these are some of the common reasons families contact us and you can see the number one reason is basic needs. And that a part of that is also our relationship with Vermont, too. One one that any caller that calls them, they will refer straight to help me grow because of that really intense level of care coordination with follow up that we can offer that to one one does not offer, don’t have the capacity to offer.

00:31:22:12 – 00:31:47:21
Unknown
So we’ve been we’ve been kind of really expanding their service for the prenatal to age population for a number of years now. And then you could see we had a lot of income support and employment work and referrals that happened again, that was during the pandemic. Even criminal justice and legal services, things like family court, economic appeals and then individual and family wellness.

00:31:47:21 – 00:32:32:24
Unknown
And that’s a lot of the developmental resources. On referrals to CIS parenting hotlines. The perinatal combinazione work fall under that bucket and you can see that although the reasons we’re calling help me grow like this basic need category has remained consistent over time, we’ve really increased our referrals for perinatal mood and anxiety disorders and we made over 230 referrals on behalf of 57 individuals in 2020 and 21, and we received 63 total contacts for payments, referrals, calls, emails, texts and provided 297 referrals.

00:32:32:24 – 00:32:59:05
Unknown
And I believe that’s in 2022. Yeah. So we’re increasing that work and we’re really proud of it and I encourage you all, if you’re working with someone who’s who’s suffering from anxiety or depression to connect either you directly as a provider talk to help me grow about resources that you may not be aware of, and we’re happy to share anything we know of that you can directly connect the family to and or refer the family to us.

00:32:59:07 – 00:33:21:12
Unknown
And Cooper shared some success stories. But these are, again, just some of the general ways that we help families, really, that navigating complex systems of care and that we’re just kind of a safety belt there to help with anything. So if there are any questions in the work you’re doing, the families, please call Cooper and ask or, you know, you can be anonymous.

00:33:21:12 – 00:33:59:15
Unknown
It’s a family anonymous. And just find out if you need help understanding these systems that can be really difficult to navigate, especially if folks are involved in child welfare systems or it’s it’s just can get really complicated. This is some of our work that we’ve done with training, early care and education providers and others. During the pandemic, we were able to continue training over 400 folks here health care, early educators, community providers, home visitors to conduct developmental and social emotional screening, and to refer families for further evaluation and or services.

00:33:59:17 – 00:34:25:22
Unknown
And so that means that today there’s over 9000 children in child care programs that have received our training. This includes over 2000 preschoolers heading off to kindergarten, better prepared to learn and succeed. We know that if folks have families and children are in programs that have received help me grow training, whether it’s pre-K or a home based child care provider, those kids are better off developmentally.

00:34:25:22 – 00:35:02:20
Unknown
Those families are better prepared for their school, their child, to thrive in school. And so that’s almost enough children to fill half of Vermont’s kindergarten classrooms. So we’re very proud of that data. Okay, So Help Me Grow offers the ages and stages online system for the state of Vermont free of charge to any provider screening. So if any of you use askew as or three, please email Cooper and we can give you access to this online system, which is very dynamic, a robust has multiple reporting features.

00:35:02:22 – 00:35:25:19
Unknown
It also has the learning activities that correspond with each screening tool Age and each domain that you can download as a PDF and mailed email to the family after a visit gets rid of those big paper books that people were Xeroxing pages out of. So it’s a really nice way to follow up after screening with those learning activities.

00:35:25:19 – 00:35:53:03
Unknown
Or if a child is in the monitoring zone on on one domain or two domains, you can give activities like speech activities or motor gross motor activities to families to help encourage that skill to progress by the before the next screen. So again, please reach out and contact us. We’re really excited to get more programs using this system and this is the programs that we have currently using.

00:35:53:03 – 00:36:20:15
Unknown
You can see the majority here in the blue are early care and education providers, and then the next large sector is medical practices. And we have a big six strong family home health agency sites. Now using that ask you online and we have I think two and maybe seem to be 316 using which is super exciting and the really exciting part of this.

00:36:20:20 – 00:36:47:05
Unknown
So each program has their own access to the ask you in a programmatic context. So like a school district could have screens and share them across, you know, pre-K programs within the district, but they would share screen results with like the home health agency or the medical practice in their town. Right. But all this data in the ask you online is going to be fed into Vermont’s universal developmental screening registry.

00:36:47:07 – 00:37:17:23
Unknown
And I know some of you on this call probably know about the registry and know when we launched it. And we’re really excited that we have this more robust, user friendly, really intuitive, askew system with a lot more features than our registry offers. And our registry is part of our immunization registry here at the Health Department. And folks are aware that vital records we have metabolic screening results, hearing results, lab results, and now we have developmental screening results.

00:37:18:00 – 00:37:39:21
Unknown
And so we have over 13,000 screens, I think, and ask you online and our I.T. is just beginning to complete this data bridge that they were in the process of building got interrupted by COVID. So stay tuned later this summer and fall and you will be able to look up the child screening history, screening results before you screen a child in our registry.

00:37:39:21 – 00:38:03:06
Unknown
And hopefully they’ll be somebody else to screen that child that that you may be able to reference to help in your own work. Well, stay tuned for more on that. All right. And now it’s time for questions. And I wonder if I should also just say our last slide has both Cooper and my email on it so you can contact us and you all have the slides.

00:38:03:06 – 00:38:46:19
Unknown
I think they’re emailed to you, but maybe I’ll stop sharing my screen so I can see people better. That’s okay. And I also put in the chat for folks Help Me grows general email inbox. Just if anyone is interested in ask you online or anything else. So feel free to reach out and start.