As a healthcare professional, families look to you and your staff for guidance regarding their child’s growth and development. This often means you have the first opportunity to identify disabilities, developmental delays or risks that might impact a child’s development. Likewise you have the opportunity to point families of these children to programs that can provide the needed support to improve or change their child’s developmental trajectory-such as Early Childhood Intervention. We know that your time is in great demand by the children whose health you manage but also limited by the constraints of today’s health care issues. ECI wants to partner with you to ensure that children have the developmental support they need to be successful and families understand their role in their child’s development by providing them with information, instruction and resources.
ECI providers focus on the whole child and include those who have the responsibility and opportunity to impact their development. Our service delivery model is evidence based and builds opportunities into family’s daily routines to practice developmental skills with their child. Each year, the ECI Childteam program exits more children from services that are on age level or need only minimal continued support than those who qualify for special education services from the public school system.
ECI certainly changes as outside influences, such as the Texas legislature and federal guidelines, change requirements and also as improvements in evidence based practices are implemented. Through all of the changes, ECI remains a dynamic system that provides the full array of services to include the developmental therapies of skills training, OT, PT and ST, hearing and vision services and case management.
We want you to know that following things are still true:
- Early referral and intervention lead to more positive child outcomes.
- Early referral is consistent with recommended practices and IDEA.
- ECI does not require a medical diagnosis or confirmed developmental delay for referral
- All ECI providers are licensed or certified in their specialty area
- Federal rule (34 CFR 303.303) mandates that children identified with a possible developmental delay be referred to ECI as soon as possible, but no more than 7 days after the child has been identified.
- ECI Physician Referral Form.
The Childteam ECI program is committed to the children and families of this community and provides a valuable and unique service that has proven to change the lives of those we serve, both children and caregivers. We welcome any opportunity to collaborate with you to improve the outcomes for an individual child or our community as a whole.