Overview of Health Care Providers
As a health care provider, you play a significant role in promoting the optimal healthy development of all Vermont’s young children. Help Me Grow wants to partner with you to help ensure families are connected to community resources and services that will assist them in raising healthy and happy children. Trained child development specialists will help the families served in your practice connect to basic needs, high quality parent education and developmental resources. Additionally, child development specialists will complete a developmental screening tool with a family and, with parent permission, convey the results to the child’s health care provider.
What do health care providers in Vermont need to know?
In Vermont, primary care providers are required to use a standardized developmental screening tool. Preferred screening tools are included in Vermont’s Universal Developmental Screening (UDS) registry, a comprehensive screening, data collection and communication system that ensures all Vermont children’s development is monitored over time and across settings. The registry enhances collaboration among health care providers, early educators and community service providers for earlier identification of developmental concerns. Learn more about how the UDS registry can support your screening and surveillance efforts. To request access to the UDS registry call 802-951-1218 or email at AHS.VDHudsregistry@vermont.gov.
Development Screening for Young Children
Learn more about developmental and behavioral screening, including specifics on reimbursement for screening in Vermont.
Guidelines & Tools: Developmental Behavioral Screening
Download Vermont’s Developmental and Behavioral Screening Guidelines and Preferred Tool list.
Birth to 5: Watch Me Thrive!
Birth to 5: Watch Me Thrive! is a coordinated federal effort to encourage healthy child development, universal developmental and behavioral screening for children, and to support the families and providers who care for them. The Birth to 5: Watch Me Thrive! Audience Guide for child health care providers describes the role of health care providers in supporting developmental promotion, screening, referral, and linkage to services, and has been updated by the Help Me Grow National Center. Learn more and find resources.
Download the Birth to 5: Watch Me Thrive! Child Health Care Provider Guide.
Poverty & Child Health
In 2016, the American Academy of Pediatrics released a policy statement and technical report on poverty and child health. The landmark policy statement, published online in Pediatrics, recommends that pediatricians screen patients for poverty risk factors during check-ups, and advocates for protecting and expanding state and federal programs that help provide opportunity for families struggling to make ends meet. The technical report describes the pervasive threat poverty poses to children’s health and development. With the goal of making kids and families happy, healthy, and whole, the AAP recommends that pediatricians use Help Me Grow and 2-1-1. Find practice tips and screening tools for pediatricians at APP.
Health Care Providers Help Strengthen Families
Developed by the Center for the Study of Social Policy, this unifying framework is unique in its approach to identifying the five protective factors that strengthen families' ability to raise well-adjusted children. The Center for the Study of Social Policy, in partnership with the American Academy of Pediatrics, produced a policy brief for health providers to help them promote children’s health and resiliency by using a strengthening families approach. Action steps for physicians include using resources such as Help Me Grow and 2-1-1 that provide an important and easy way to connect families with needed resources, services and support. These telephone help lines connect families to a trained support person who can work with them to learn more about what they need and connect them to appropriate resources. The Help Me Grow National Center released a policy brief summarizing a study demonstrating that its services supported families in developing protective factors to promote optimal development. Read the Help Me Grow Protective Factors Policy Brief.
HMG Policy Brief
Read the Making the Link: Help Me Grow policy brief to learn how the Help Me Grow philosophy and model align well with the Strengthening Families mission and protective factors.
Vermont's Strengthening Families State Profile
Read Vermont’s Strengthening Families State Profile which offers an overview of the Strengthening Families work in Vermont as well as additional information on key aspects, evaluation and evolving work.