Community Online ASQ System (C.O.A.S.)
By Shallen Gurtler
Children who start kindergarten with an undiagnosed developmental delay, face an uphill climb in terms of succeeding in school and life. However, there are developmental screens that can catch these delays early in life. An Ages and Stages Questionnaire, or ASQ, is a questionnaire that screens for developmental delays in a child from birth to age 5. If there are developmental delays detected, the child can be referred to a therapy program such as Brith-to-3. However, not every child in Brown County is given an ASQ at the most ideal times to ensure that developmental delays are diagnosed. Further, the ASQ’s in Brown County are most often completed on a paper form and are thus not easily shared with community partners such as school districts, childcare centers, and primary care physicians.
To make a more integrated system for sharing information the Community Online ASQ System, or COAS, Team is working to implement an integrated online system of ASQs for all of Brown County. Once launched, the online system will connect all partners that utilize ASQs such as public health services, health systems, school districts, and childcare providers. By connecting all of these partners, we can minimize miscommunication, increase parental engagement, increase ASQs completed, and decrease ASQ duplication. By having the ASQs available online, parents can engage with their child while taking the ASQ boosting parent engagement and increasing the accuracy of the ASQ taken.
Each of the partners on the COAS Team are considering the move to an online ASQ versus the predominant paper process. Some partners, for example, Encompass, are already utilizing the online ASQ. We are happy to announce that recently, Birth-to-3 has received the approval to move to an online ASQ system ASAP. While timing will vary for each partner organization, we are likely to see the shift to Online ASQ’s within Brown County over the next several years for the vast majority of ASQ’s.
Published: January 7, 2021
Edited: August 5, 2021
