An initiative that held child developmental checks in the community has wrapped up, after seeing significant results in the past twelve months.
The Early Development Intervention Engagement (EDIE) project involved four Nurses attending early childcare education centres in Coomera, an area where there is high risk of developmental variances.
“The project was highly successful,” Assistant Director of Nursing, Community Child and Family Health Rebecca Shaw said.
“We engaged with 13 centres and had an 87 percent engagement rate, which exceeded our expectations.
“We assessed more than 210 children between the ages of 1 to 6 years old and found more than 60 percent were identified as not being on track with their development.
“We were expecting around 30 percent of children would be behind, so it’s clear this project was needed.”
The team received $100,000 in funding for the pilot.
“There has been a marked increase in concerns relating to children’s behaviour in the Early Childcare Education Centres, with increases in suspensions, which developmental delay can be a common trigger for,” Rebecca said.
“It highlighted to us the need for early intervention and why a project like this was so important.
“We referred 120 children on for hearing tests, to General Practitioners, the Child Development Service and the NDIS for further support.
The developmental checks included speech, fine and gross motor skills, social-emotional, cognitive and intellectual.
The most common developmental delay identified was speech and communication.
“We know from research that children who start school with developmental delays are more likely to struggle and it can really impact their long-term health, wellbeing and academic outcomes,” Rebecca said.
Clinical Nurse Terese Spry said the program will now be heading to Pimpama to work with a new group of childcare centres.
“We really saw how much of a difference it made to bring the service to places where children and their families felt comfortable,” Terese said.
“It made it easier for families to access the care they needed without having to travel far or feel out of place.
“Spending time getting to know the staff at the centres and working closely with them helped us build strong, trusting relationships, which made the whole experience better for everyone involved.”
The Child and Family Health service provide key age developmental checks which are encouraged universally at all ages across 0-5 years, as recommended in the Personal Health Record, also known as the ‘Redbook’. The health and developmental checks involve routine tracking of a child’s growth and assessing developmental progress, including gross and fine motor skills, speech and language, and social and emotional development.
To learn more about the service and eligibility, click here.
