Fifteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

The Early Discovery Service Partnership Program provides services to children with mild delays who do not qualify for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in Miami-Dade County. Early Discovery is a partnership of community agencies and families designed to prevent children with mild delays from getting worse. Early Discovery’s mission is to provide a system of intervention that will reduce the number of young children needing developmental intervention services when they begin kindergarten. Six community agencies provided speech therapy, occupational therapy, developmental therapy, and behavior therapy to children either in their home or in a childcare setting. All services are provided for free through a grant from the Children’s Trust of Miami Dade County. 2,268 children that participated from 2009 to 2017. There were approximately 45 therapists that provided services across the agencies and their demographic characteristics matched those of the families they served. One year after services ended, we asked 737 families to participate in a follow-up survey to determine long-term effects of the intervention and if children were not in need of special education services when they entered primary school. The majority of children (81.3%; mean age=3.67-years) did not require any other intervention after completing our program. Further, of the children who were enrolled in public elementary schools (n=227; mean age=5.19-years), the majority (95.6%) were not enrolled in special education. These results suggest that using community providers to deliver services to children with mild delays can be an effective way to prevent children from needing special services.