Health Practitioner Support

The Collaboration builds community awareness and connections to early childhood health resources for health professionals. By providing practitioners with an opportunity to network, and access community resources more readily, we hope to enrich the lives of the children they care for in our community. We support health care professionals in the following ways:

The Physicians’ Network and Biannual Events: The Collaboration launched the Physicians’ Network in July 2008 to promote a stronger connection between the early childhood community and health practitioners and to increase their awareness of early childhood developmental issues and services. The Physicians’ Network meetings are held twice a year, in April and October. Explore some of the past topics that were discussed at the event, or see past newsletters on our Health Professionals’ Resources page.

The Developmental Referral and Services Directory: The Developmental Referral and Services Directory provides information to health care providers referring children to Early Intervention and Early Childhood Special Education for evaluations. The Directory describes the referral processes for both systems and contains listings for Child Family Connection Offices, school districts and developmental services. The Directory was developed through a CATCH grant awarded by the American Academy of Pediatrics to Dr. Rebecca Barbato to develop a cohesive referral and follow-up process for physicians to use when they believe a child may have developmental delays and need additional evaluations and or services. CATCH stands for Community Access to Child Health. The booklet is distributed and updated every two years in print and on an ongoing basis online. You can view the Developmental Referral and Services Directory online or download a PDF of the 2019-2020 print edition.

Health Professionals’ Resources: Quickly access information around the referral process for early intervention, standardized forms, and a menu of resources organized by theme to conduct referrals and easily share with families.