Developmental Options for your Baby or Toddler
The RMHS Children’s Clinical Team provides evaluations for infants and toddlers who may have a developmental delay or disability.
It can be difficult for parents to know whether their child needs support in meeting developmental milestones. Rocky Mountain Human Services (RMHS) is here to help.
Our RMHS Children’s Clinical team can help you get started by checking to see if your child has a developmental delay or disability.
“One of the great things about having an internal clinical team is that you can really have quality assurance, data integrity and consistency,” said Andrea Simpson, Children’s Clinical Program Manager.
The RMHS Children’s Clinical team provides services to infants, children and adolescents, birth to 18-years-old with developmental delays, disabilities and/or behavioral health disorders. Many services are provided at no direct costs to families in Denver.
The team provides clinical assessments that identify areas in which children may need additional support. Our clinicians can identify delays and diagnose intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD), providing evaluations and treatment recommendations in these areas:
Autism spectrum disorders
Communication delays or disorders
Motor delays or disorders
Anxiety and depression in children with developmental delays
Behavioral challenges
Cognitive delays
Sensory processing differences
Infant and early childhood social-emotional concerns
The Children’s Clinical team will guide parents through the process of determining eligibility for services.
The first step is a referral. You can either get a referral from a third party or you can refer yourself online at www.rmhumanservices.org/ei
The second step is to schedule an evaluation and move forward with eligibility determination. You can do this with our internal Children’s Clinical team or Child Find at Denver Public Schools. Qualified professionals will help you prepare for the evaluation and determine whether it will take place virtually or in person.
The third step is the evaluation itself, which will determine whether your child needs support in any of the five areas of development: communication, social emotional, motor/physical, thinking and/or self-help. During the evaluation, there will be a service coordinator and two clinicians from different disciplines in attendance, one of which will specialize in the area of concern. This type of multidisciplinary evaluation provides families with a set of well-rounded perspectives from experts with varied areas of expertise. At the end of the evaluation, families are then told if they qualify for services at RMHS.
The evaluation process helps prepare qualified families create goals with their team to address the above five areas of development. Based on results of the evaluation, children may qualify for either Early Intervention or Denver Early Steps, which have slightly different eligibility standards.
RMHS created the Denver Early Steps program with the support of Mill Levy funding to fill a service gap when the Colorado Early Intervention program changed its eligibility requirements last year.
While the Denver Early Steps program provides similar services to those of the Early Intervention program, Denver Early Steps offers a degree of increased flexibility and expanded eligibility, which allows us to reach more children and families in need of developmental support.
RMHS also offers a Transition Home program, which supports babies and families transitioning from the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) into their home. It’s also intended as a bridge to Early Intervention services.
To learn more about our programs, or to apply or schedule an evaluation visit, please go to https://www.rmhumanservices.org/ccs.
