FEDM is defined as an intentional partnership of families and providers working to highlight a child’s developmental progress and identify opportunities for support and education for positive outcomes.
The three essential attributes of FEDM include:
1) Families are regarded as the expert on their child’s development
2) Information is gathered to inform a holistic approach to the child’s development
3) Developmental progress and needs are discussed over time
The expanded definition of FEDM codifies best practice, affirming a family-driven, asset-based approach that recognizes what is going well and identifies families’ priorities for their children, inclusive of risk factors like social drivers of health. Inclusion of “family-engaged” in the terminology centers families as experts about their child and equal partners in the process.
The FEDM Toolkit below is designed to help you share the concept of family-engaged developmental monitoring with partners and stakeholders and provide real life examples of application and practice.
What is FEDM?
Presenting on FEDM
- PowerPoint Template for Presenting on FEDM
Have the opportunity to present on FEDM to partners, funders, or policy-makers? Use this slide deck as is or integrate slides into your own presentation.
- Family-Engaged Developmental Monitoring Talking Points for Stakeholders
Connecting with different early childhood stakeholders, but not sure how to describe FEDM? This resource includes tailored talking points for helping to align FEDM with current practices for some common early childhood stakeholders: early childhood educators, child health care providers, home visitors, and early childhood system leaders.
Self-Assessments
- Take the FEDM Assessment for Programs and Providers
Get a sense of how well you are currently integrating the principles and activities of FEDM into your current work as a service provider or as an organization. Identify steps you and your organization can take to enhance its FEDM competencies.
- Take the FEDM Assessment for Early Childhood Systems
Get a sense of how well your community or state is currently integrating the principles and activities of FEDM into its early childhood system-building thinking and activities. Identify steps your community or state can take to enhance its FEDM competencies.
FEDM & Help Me Grow
- Family-Engaged Developmental Monitoring and the Help Me Grow Model
As a HMG affiliate, how can you advance FEDM through the infrastructure you’ve established in implementing the HMG Model? This resource identifies concrete ways in which FEDM practices can be implemented in each of the four Core Components of the Model: Centralized Access Point, Family & Community Outreach, Child Health Care Provider Outreach, and Data Collection & Analysis.
- From HMG Connecticut: Local and State Strategies to Advance Family-Engaged Developmental Monitoring
The pandemic highlighted the struggles that families and providers have with accessing developmental and behavioral services and resources. The new Roadmap for Advancing Family-Engaged Developmental Monitoring offers a framework with tangible ways that systems can support the needs of families with young children and the providers that serve them. In this session, Help Me Grow affiliates from North Texas and Connecticut will share ways that they have taken this framework to meet the needs of families and providers in their service area.
Originally presented at HMG National Forum 2023.
- Parents as Partners: How HMG Outreach Coordinators Can Work With Families to Monitor Children’s Development
This session highlights how HMG Alaska and Connecticut are incorporating FEDM concepts and evidence-based practices into their work.
Originally presented at an April 2023 HMG National Outreach Coordinator Network Session
