In McHenry County our Child and Family Connections (CFC) office is called Options and Advocacy. CFC is there to support any concerns about your child’s development and is the point of entry for Illinois Early Intervention Services with McHenry County.
You are able to get into contact with them directly, their website (linked below) is very helpful in guiding you through with FAQ’s and developmental information. Anyone can make a referral to Early Intervention. Most often, we do see them come from pediatricians. But I, myself, have had friends, family and others reach out to me about their children and some development concerns and after discussing it with them, I referred them and, they were right! Their child fell into a category that allowed them to receive services. Daycare teachers, yourself, anyone can send in a referral, as long as they have the parent/guardian’s consent!
What are the areas of concern and assessment? We assess cognitive, communication, social-emotional, physical development and adaptive behavior.
Cognitive is how your child explores and processes information like problem solving or mental skills and knowledge. Some examples of these in infants could be finding a partially hidden object, touching an adult to continue interaction or pulling a cloth off their face.
Communication is made up of two categories which is a receptive and expressive language. Receptive (depending on age) communication is things like moving body to music, pointing to body parts when asked and stopping when their name is called. Expressive (again, age dependent) is more things like using words for parent or caregiver (mama, dada, etc), having a word, sign or sound for drink and using words, sounds or phrases.
Social-emotional has a very wide range of things to be looking for. It’s looking for things like expressing feelings such as anger, tiredness, excitement, hunger and recognizing familiar faces and objects, looking at someone who calls their name, extending arms to familiar people and evolving into things like taking turns and recognizing others emotions.
The Physical Domain is separated into Gross and Fine Motor skills. With gross motor, the things we look for are rolling from back to side, sitting with hips supported, bouncing in standing when supported by an adult and evolving into walking, jumping, squats during play, catching the ball, etc. Fine motor skills are more like banging two objects together, turning pages in a book, transferring objects from one hand to another and evolving into being able to hold a pencil and cut paper.
Adaptive behavior involves things like swallowing pureed foods, feeding themself finger foods, sleeping through the night, drinking from an open cup, trying to wash hands and face, helping with simple household tasks, opening the door using the handle or knob, taking off socks independently.
There are so many different categories, behaviors and milestones that can put your child in the space to qualify for services and why not give them the resources available?!
If you have any questions or want to talk more about Early Intervention please feel free to reach out to me at WyndowAdvocacy@gmail.com and we can schedule some time to talk!
Positively,
Jodie Olenick, DT, BCASE.