Early Intervention Care Coordination Provider Toolkit

The Early Intervention Care Coordination Provider Toolkit is a resource that we hope will be of great use and value to you. The toolkit is designed to help providers initiate a referral to Early Intervention services for children with suspected developmental delay, and to receive information back from Early Intervention about the outcome of the referral. This provider toolkit has been developed by Illinois Healthy Beginnings II (IHB2). IHB2 was a three-year project with funding from The Commonwealth Fund to the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services (HFS). The project was administered by the National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP). Collaborators on the project were the Illinois Department of Human Services (DHS); Illinois Chapter, American Academy of Pediatrics (ICAAP) and HFS.

The goal of the IHB2 Project is two-fold:

• To ensure that Illinois children with suspected developmental delay or risk factors receive coordinated comprehensive care in which providers interacting with the family are aware of each other, appropriately access a variety of services, and collaborate to ensure the best possible outcomes are achieved for the child; and
• To create support for children and their families who may be at risk for developmental delay or disability but who do not meet Early Intervention or special education eligibility guidelines.

To encourage success in meeting these goals, the purpose of the toolkit is to provide a referral resource for enhancing care coordination among primary care medical homes, early intervention service providers, and community service providers that work with Illinois children and their families. The content of the toolkit recognizes that linking medical homes to home visitors, childcare providers, and providers serving homeless children and families, enables the PCP to:

• Provide more comprehensive care, and
• Increase knowledge of access to resources not typically available in a medical home.

Likewise, by collaborating with the medical home, the home visitor, childcare provider, and providers serving homeless children and families may be able to:

• Communicate the family’s health needs and risk factors back to the PCP,
• Increase opportunities for referral to additional services or consultation,
• Reinforce the need to use referrals for additional services, and
• Reinforce the need to use the medical home (not the emergency room) for primary health care.

Early Intervention Care Coordination Provider Toolkit