If your child is having difficulty reaching developmental milestones, it can be challenging to know where to begin seeking assessments and support. The SmartStart Hub at FIREFLY serves as a central access point for families and caregivers looking for children’s developmental services. If you are concerned about your child’s development, but don’t know where to start or what help you need, this is the place for you!
Our dedicated team is here to help:
The SmartStart Hub is offered through Centralized Intake, to connect with us please call 1-833-696-5437 or e-mail [email protected].
Anyone who is concerned about their child’s development but doesn’t know where to start or what programs or services might benefit their child. The SmartStart Hub will help identify your child’s needs and help connect you with those services.
The SmartStart Hub provides a consistent way of delivering services – for example, families will be contacted by FIREFLY’s Centralized Intake where Intake Workers will have exploratory conversations with families to discuss their concerns related to their child’s or youth’s development and work with families to develop a plan to address their child’s needs.
Intake Workers will connect families to appropriate services including Speech-language Pathology, Occupational Therapy, and Physiotherapy as well as mental health services, specialty clinics, and family-based support.
Anyone concerned about their child’s or youth’s development from birth until the ages of 19, or up to the age of 21 if they are in school and living in Ontario, can contact a SmartStart Hub to explore their concerns. A diagnosis is not required to access the SmartStart Hub.
P4P is a family-directed organization that is committed to empowering people with disabilities and their families to create secure futures through providing information that families can use to support their loved ones. For more information, click here.
As a SmartStart Hub FIREFLY’s Centralized Intake uses the CANChild F-words to promote a strength-based, family-centered, holistic approach. Initial exploratory conversations will be centered around the six F-words.
Created by CANChild, the F-words highlight essential areas of child development: Family, Fun, Friends, Functioning, Fitness, and Future. These F-words emphasize a strengths-based approach, encouraging us to focus on what children can do.
The goal is to inspire families, caregivers, and professionals in children’s developmental services to embrace this perspective and integrate these concepts when working with children with disabilities.
This free, online training course is self-paced and is designed for families, health care providers and managers, community service providers and educators. In the training course, CanChild introduces the CANChild F-words for Child Development and provides guidance on how to use the approach in everyday life and practice.
Click here to access the training course.
You should now be able to access the F-word Foundations Course!
820A Lakeview Drive
Kenora, Ontario
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