Overview
This proposal aims to test whether a proposed community-clinical linkage (CCL), an educational-medical linkage model, improves access to school-based services and subsequent child, parent, family and health service outcomes and offers a promising strategy to address longstanding racial, ethnic and income health care disparities among families with preschool children with developmental delays and disabilities. The investigators designed an educational-clinical linkage model, Preschool and Me (PreM) which incorporates key components of a CCL. It also utilizes a personalized medical-education care plan with remote lay navigator support to increase access to school-based services.
Description
Participants (n=320) will be randomized to either: 1) 6 months of PreM (intervention group) or 2) a waitlist control arm receiving the intervention after a 6-month delay. All participants will be followed for 12 months with data collection occurring at 4 timepoints (baseline, 3-, 6- and 12-months). There will also be a simultaneously conducted mixed-methods implementation evaluation focusing on implementation outcomes to serve as indicators for implementation success; measures of implementation quality; and intermediate outcomes to understand and address successes and failures in relation to clinical outcomes.
Eligibility
Parent-child dyads who meet inclusion criteria will be enrolled.
Child inclusion criteria are:
- Meets age requirements for early childhood special education (ECSE) services for Illinois (i.e., 3-5 years old);
- diagnosed with a developmental delay or disability (DD) or determined to be at risk for DD (clinical concerns raised by primary care provider/healthcare provider or by parents at the time of enrollment);
- is not receiving any ECSE services.
Exclusion Criteria:
if inclusion criteria is met, no other exclusion criteria will be applied.
Parent inclusion criteria are:
- aged18 years or older;
- lives in Chicago;
- speaks English or Spanish;
- a legal guardian of a child who meets inclusion criteria.