Parents, families and even agencies sometimes struggle with finding resources and answers to help children with developmental concerns. To help make information more accessible, Help Me Grow is expanding efforts to support families.
“If you move to a new area or just don’t know whom to call, it can be very challenging,” said Laurie Mold, co-director of the Delta-Schoolcraft Great Start Collaborative (DSGSC) and a family liaison. “If you try to get help, you may go to one agency with several questions and they may be able to answer one question but may not provide any help with the other questions.”
In an attempt to resolve those issues, Help Me Grow Michigan (HMG MI) is expanding its pilot program into nine new areas including: Berrien, Calhoun, Copper Country, Delta-Schoolcraft, Eaton, Ingham, Iosco, Kalamazoo and Livingston.
While HMG MI does not directly provide services, the organization acts as a “central intake” within a community to help parents and families. The purpose of HMG MI’s pilot program is to support early and appropriate identification of children who would benefit from special education services. It starts or expands the use of developmental screening through the online Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ) in counties where universal screening is not currently offered and provides follow-up screening interpretation and care coordination services for families.
“The DSGSC has been working on a ‘No Wrong Door’ initiative in our area to help local service providers know where to find information so they can quickly connect families to the support and services they need for children,” said Mold. “Becoming a part of the Help Me Grow network is the missing component because it provides families with a central access point for information, as well as a dedicated care coordinator families can talk with to navigate the early childhood system and who also follows up to ensure they found what they were looking for. We are so excited to be part of this pilot.”
While HMG MI was first established in 2013, this recent pilot project is a collaborative effort that partners with federal and state departments, specifically the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education, to help parents and families find support services with referrals to programs such as Early On Michigan and Build Up Michigan, secure family support services or connect with a health care provider. The HMG MI initiative currently serves 43 counties via 30 intermediate school districts and/or Great Start Collaboratives.
Benefits offered to pilot participants include:
- Access to free developmental screenings for children from birth through age 5, with follow-up.
- A trained care coordinator to support families with accessing early childhood services, addressing developmental concerns and answering general parenting questions and/or other concerns.
- Access to the miearlychildhood.org platform for centralized intake of Build Up inquiries as well as care coordinators to field these inquiries and follow up if ineligible for services.
Mold knows firsthand the value of being able to connect to help. Her son is autistic and when they moved from Ohio to Michigan, they found the system was much different.
“I was just trying to figure it all out. It can be very isolating,” said Mold. “You feel like you are in a pinball machine just banging around to find resources and it should not be that complicated.”
Mold said that Help Me Grow helps answer all questions parents have and coordinators are engaged from start to finish.
Help Me Grow is the only evidence-based, nationally recognized early childhood system model. While Help Me Grow can look different in each county, the model consists of similar elements for families. They include:
- A centralized access point to assist families and professionals in connecting children to community resources that help them thrive.
- Family and community outreach to help build parent and provider understanding of healthy child development and available supportive services and how both are important to improving children’s outcomes.
- When potential concerns are spotted early on, they can be easier to address. Child Health Care Provider Outreach supports early detection and intervention efforts and connects medical providers to the community resources to support families.
- To ensure the resources are working effectively, data collection and analysis supports evaluation, helps identify systemic gaps, bolsters advocacy efforts and guides quality improvement.
“Finding help quickly is important because we recognize that when a young family has children, it might be the first time they have had to reach out for help,” Mold said. “It is their first entry into the early childhood ‘system,’ and we want families to have a smooth and successful experience. This makes families resilient and helps children thrive.”
For more information, visit www.helpmegrow-mi.org/, or to find an HMG affiliate near you, go to www.helpmegrow-mi.org/counties.