What is Help Me Grow?

“The goal of Help Me Grow Florida is to promote healthy development for every child in our state. Help Me Grow (HMG) is a unique, comprehensive, and integrated statewide system designed to address the need for early identification of developmental and/or behavioral concerns, and then to link children and their families to community-based developmental and behavioral services and supports.

Help Me Grow is an effective system because its efforts revolve around uniting a community to address the need for early detection through surveillance and screenings of children and building connections to community-based services and supports to address their needs.

Early detection and intervention are critical for optimal outcomes for children, but too often children miss this opportunity. Help Me Grow addresses this by building collaboration among community programs, providing a centralized access point for information and referral, promoting surveillance and screenings, as well as educating and informing the community. 

How Help Me Grow Works:

Help Me Grow supports families, child health care, early care and education, and human service providers. The community can use Help Me Grow to identify early signs of developmental or behavioral concerns and the available community resources to address their needs. Without Help Me Grow, this sensitive period of opportunity may be missed due to untimely assessments or difficulty in finding and navigating appropriate resources.” Help Me Grow is a system that builds collaboration across sectors, including child healthcare, early care and education and family support.  Through comprehensive physician and community outreach centralized information and referral centers, families are linked with needed programs and services. Ongoing data collection and analysis helps identify gaps and barriers in the system.