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In the past decade, American and Canadian pediatric societies have recommended that pediatric care clinicians follow a schedule of routine surveillance and screening for young children to detect conditions such as developmental delay, speech and language delays and disorders, and autism spectrum disorder. The goal of these recommendations is to ensure that children with these developmental issues receive appropriate referrals for evaluation and intervention. However, in 2015 and 2016, the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) and the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care issued recommendations that did not support universal screening for these conditions. This occasional paper is designed to help make sense of the discrepancy between Task Force recommendations and those of the pediatric community in light of research and practice. To clarify the issues, in this paper I review the distinction between screening and surveillance; the benefits of screening and early identification; how the USPSTF makes its recommendations; and what the implications of not supporting screening are for research, clinical practice, and families.

To meet current federal regulations and provide the opportunity for individuals to receive services in the least restrictive environments, states are focusing on providing day habilitation services in inclusive community environments, rather than traditional congregate facility-based programs. The two main services of day habilitation focus on helping people work and participate in community activities and civic life while engaging with nondisabled people in their communities. To ensure that a person can live an "everyday life" regardless of the supports they need, it is important to consider employment and non-work services in tandem. The two services are Community Employment (CE) and Community Life Engagement (CLE). Understanding effective interagency collaboration to support individuals with Intellectual and/or Developmental Disabilities (I/DD) requires a multilevel view of the agencies themselves, including their roles and relationships within a federal framework, their statutory and regulatory obligations at the state level, and the key touchpoints they have in the lives of individuals with disabilities and their families. Collaborative efforts can affect all these levels. This paper looks at the roles of federal and state agencies with responsibility for education, vocational rehabilitation (VR), and I/DD services over the life stages of students, transition-age youth, and adults. In addition, the paper examines the pivotal role of meaningful and effective person-centered planning (PCP) in ensuring that, at the individual level, the various agencies are successful in partnering to achieve positive individual-level outcomes. [This report was co-authored by ThinkWork! At the Institute for Community Inclusion at UMass Boston.]

Opportunities and experiences for all students, including students with intellectual and developmental disabilities, to build self-determination abilities and skills is critical to enable positive postsecondary outcomes (e.g., competitive and integrated employment, community access participation). However, racially and ethnically marginalized students with disabilities might experience fewer opportunities to build self-determination due to systemic issues (e.g., absence of policies emphasizing equity and racial justice, lack of understanding of students' social and cultural capital). The present study is an initial, exploratory analysis to determine if students with disabilities from racially and ethnically marginalized backgrounds reported different self-determination outcomes as they engaged in the Self-Determined Learning Model of Instruction (SDLMI) in inclusive, general education classrooms. Findings suggested African American/Black students with and without disabilities as well as Hispanic/Latinx students without disabilities scored highest in self-determination at the beginning of the academic year (baseline) and that including disability status crossed with race/ethnicity as a predictor of self-determination baseline improved understanding of the data patterns. Implications for systemic changes to enable equitable education across research and practice are discussed. [This paper was published in "Inclusion" v9 n3 p189-205 Sep 2021.]

The Canadian Little Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire (Little DCDQ-CA) is a parent-report screening instrument that identifies 3- to 4-year-old children who may be at risk for Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD). We tested the criterion validity of the Little DCDQ-CA in a sample of preschool-aged children in the United States (N = 233). Factor analysis resulted in a single dominant factor. Using established cut-off scores, 45% of the sample was identified as at-risk for DCD. Although a much larger percentage of children was identified as at-risk than would be expected based on the prevalence of formal DCD diagnoses in the population, the Little DCDQ-CA demonstrated good criterion validity. Children who exceeded the at-risk criterion exhibited impaired motor competence, EF, and early numeracy skills and were rated as having greater ADHD behaviors by their teachers, relative to their peers. This pattern of cognitive and behavioral deficits is consistent who those observed among children with a formal DCD diagnosis. [This paper will be published in "Assessment."]

Educator teams consisting of a general education teacher and a special education teacher were recruited to participate in a project where they used the Systematic Supports Planning Process (SSPP) to plan, implement, and monitor individualized supports for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) attending general education classrooms. Educators completed a survey before and after the project where they assessed their confidence in applying UDL principles and provided examples of how they applied UDL principles in their classrooms. Although quantitative responses indicated that the confidence levels of general education teachers and special education teachers increased following participation in the project, qualitative findings were mixed regarding specific actions that demonstrated how UDL principles were applied. The implications for future research and professional development on UDL and arranging individualized supports in general education classrooms for students with IDD are discussed. [This paper will be published in "International Journal of Developmental Disabilities."]

Audio-visual recording and location tracking produce enormous quantities of digital data with which researchers can document children's everyday interactions in naturalistic settings and assessment contexts. Machine learning and other computational approaches can produce replicable, automated measurements of these big behavioral data. The economies of scale afforded by repeated automated measurements offer a potent approach to investigating linkages between real-time behavior and developmental change. In our work, automated measurement of audio from child-worn recorders--which quantify the frequency of child and adult speech and index its phonemic complexity--are paired with ultrawide radio tracking of children's location and interpersonal orientation. Applications of objective measurement indicate the influence of adult behavior in both expert ratings of attachment behavior and ratings of autism severity, suggesting the role of dyadic factors in these "child" assessments. In the preschool classroom, location/orientation measures provide data-driven measures of children's social contact, fertile ground for vocal interactions. Both the velocity of children's movement toward one another and their social contact with one another evidence homophily: children with autism spectrum disorder, other developmental disabilities, and typically developing children were more likely to interact with children in the same group even in inclusive preschool classrooms designed to promote interchange between all children. In the vocal domain, the frequency of peer speech and the phonemic complexity of teacher speech predict the frequency and phonemic complexity of children's own speech over multiple timescales. Moreover, children's own speech predicts their assessed language abilities across disability groups, suggesting how everyday interactions facilitate development. [This paper was published in "Advances in Child Development and Behavior" v62 2022.]

Problem/Purpose: Young children with developmental speech and/or language impairment (DSLI) often fail to develop important oral language and early literacy skills that are foundational for subsequent schooling and reading success. The purpose of this investigation was to examine the efficacy of the TELL curriculum and associated evidence-based teaching practices in promoting the acquisition of oral language and early literacy skills for preschool children with DSLI. Participants: Participants included 202 male and 87 female preschoolers with DSLI in the absence of other developmental impairment. Children ranged in age from 43 to 63 months. They were enrolled in 91 inclusive preschool classes and their corresponding classroom teachers were all female. Method: In this cluster RCT, classroom teachers were randomly assigned to implement the TELL curriculum or to continue with their business-as-usual (BAU) curriculum. Proximal outcomes were assessed with investigator-developed curriculum-based measures (CBM) administered six times over the school year and an investigator-developed assessment of vocabulary targeted in TELL. Standardized tests of oral language ("Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals Preschool - 2nd Edition"), and early literacy skills ("Test of Preschool Early Literacy"), and a benchmarked early literacy assessment ("Phonological Awareness and Literacy Screening PreK") were administered at the beginning and end of the school year to determine impact on more distal outcomes. Results: Results indicated a significant TELL effect for all CBMs at later measurement points with Cohen's "ds" in the medium (0.43) to very large (1.25) range. TELL effects were also noted for the vocabulary measures with small to medium between-group effect sizes (Cohen's f^2 range from 0.02 to 0.44). There were no significant TELL effects for the more distal measures. Conclusion: Based on progress measures, the TELL curriculum was effective for improving the oral language and early literacy skills of young children with DSLI. [This paper will be published in "Early Childhood Research Quarterly."]

Case managers, often called support coordinators, are pivotal in the service system supporting people with intellectual/developmental disabilities (I/DD) and their families to have meaningful lives in the community, which includes access to community integrated employment. Support coordinators balance this priority, along with ensuring individual health and well-being and completing the administrative duties associated with Medicaid requirements. Further, as employment practices and service structures evolve, case managers will need additional skills and knowledge around employment service delivery across multiple systems as part of their repertoire. This white paper analyzes the importance and complexity of support coordination and identifies policy considerations and strategies for public I/DD systems to assist support coordinators (and teams) to embed employment as a priority in service plan development, implementation, and follow-up. Support coordination and planning processes of three states (Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C.) are highlighted. [This report was produced by the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center (RRTC) on Advancing Employment for Individuals with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, a project of ThinkWork! at the Institute for Community Inclusion at UMass Boston.]

From an educational perspective, self-determination is the way that individuals act according to their own decisions. It is characterized by knowing where and when a person should do a certain action without intervention from others. To be self-determined, it is necessary to develop self-regulation skills. Therefore, teaching the self-determination process should go through systematic instructions that focus on specific abilities. One of the major abilities is self-regulation. According to Ellen Galinsky (2010), self-regulation is essential for success in school, work, and life. Usually, individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities are more likely to face difficulties in this area. Therefore, to promote self-regulation, educators should consider three factors as the main aspects of self-regulation. The three aspects are self-monitoring, self-evaluation and self-reinforcement. The purpose of this paper is to clarify some aspects of self-regulation and suggest some strategies to promote and enhance self-regulation.

Two hundred and nine children receiving early childhood special education services for developmental disabilities or delays who also had behavioral, social, or attentional difficulties were included in a study of an intervention to increase school readiness, including early literacy skills. Results showed that the intervention had a significant positive effect on children's literacy skills from baseline to the end of summer before the start of kindergarten (d = 0.14). The intervention also had significant indirect effects on teacher ratings of children's literacy skills during the fall of their kindergarten year (ß = 0.09). Additionally, when scores were compared to standard benchmarks, a greater percentage of the children who received the intervention moved from being at risk for reading difficulties to having low risk. Overall, this study demonstrates that a school readiness intervention delivered prior to the start of kindergarten may help increase children's early literacy skills. [This paper was published in "Journal of School Psychology" v57 p15-27 2016.]

This paper describes the FAB (Functionally Alert Behavior) Strategies approach to improve behavior in children and adolescents with complex behavioral challenges. FAB Strategies include evidence-based environmental adaptations, sensory modulation, positive behavioral support, and physical self-regulation strategies. FAB Strategies can be used by teachers, parents, as well as occupational, physical, speech and mental health therapists to improve the behavior of students with developmental, sensory processing and mental health challenges.

The transition to school may be particularly difficult for children with developmental disabilities and behavioral difficulties. Such children are likely to experience problems with self-regulation skills, which are critical to school adjustment. Additionally, inconsistent discipline practices and low parental involvement in children's schooling may contribute to a poor transition to school. This study employed a randomized clinical trial to examine the effects of a school readiness intervention that focused on children's self-regulation skills as well as parenting and parental involvement in school. Results showed that the intervention had positive effects on children's self-regulation in kindergarten as measured by teacher and observer reports. Additionally, the intervention significantly reduced ineffective parenting prior to school entry, which in turn affected parental involvement. This finding is significant because it demonstrates that parental involvement in school may be increased by efforts to improve parenting skills in general. Overall, the study demonstrated that school adjustment across kindergarten among children with developmental disabilities and behavioral difficulties can be enhanced through an intervention aimed specifically at improving school readiness skills. [This paper was published in "Prevention Science" v16 p222-232 2015.]