Bright Spots Webinars are an opportunity to highlight innovative efforts to improve systems of care and support for children with autism and other disabilities and their families.

December's Bright Spot Webinar highlighted work being done in Door County to maintain early childhood service delivery and communication during the pandemic. Presenters were members of Door County Partnership for Children and Families (DCPCF), a collaboration between United Way, Door County Department of Health & Human Services (DHS) and Birth to 3.

We are always looking for speakers and topics of interest for upcoming webinars. Have a Bright Spot to share? Click the button below to make a suggestion!

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) are collaborating to revise the Learn The Signs. Act Early. (LTSAE) materials. New materials will become available in 2022.  

The CDC continues to endorse the current materials as they include helpful information and are state of the art. Materials customized with Wisconsin program information are available online at: https://actearly.wisc.edu/free-materials/. Please share this link widely within your networks!

New! The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) offers a free Family Friendly Referral Guide focused on supporting families and caregivers whose child has a developmental concern. Pediatric practices can customize this guide with information about local referral resources, and then use the guide to support families/caregivers in understanding what to do if a developmental concern has been identified. The guide also illustrates the importance of following through with developmental referrals.  Visit the AAP Developmental Surveillance and Screening webpage to view and download these and other resources.

The AAP offers a FREE resource guide for pediatricians that highlights the developmental surveillance component of identifying strengths, risks, and protective factors. In 2020 the AAP conducted in-depth interviews with pediatricians related to developmental surveillance. Pediatricians reported challenges identifying strengths, risks and protective factors, a key component of developmental surveillance as outlined in the AAP clinical report, Promoting Optimal Developmental: Identifying Infants and Young Children with Developmental Disorders Through Developmental Surveillance and Screening. This resource is designed to further assist pediatricians with discussing and identifying family strengths, risks and protective factors, further supporting children, families and caregivers. Visit the AAP Developmental Surveillance and Screening webpage to view and download these and other resources.

“Know your audience” is a mantra familiar to communicators everywhere. We think that’s the easy part – but is it? Communicating with your audience in a way that is accurate, respectful, and inclusive of everyone is more challenging.

Now there is a new resource to the rescue, the Health Equity Guiding Principles for Inclusive Communication, created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Listen to podcast guest, Michelle Bonds, CDC’s director of the Division of Public Affairs, as she describes the purpose of this work. Bonds assembled and led a team of subject matter experts across CDC to create the Guiding Principles.