Plan for the Application Year - NPM #6: (Percent of children, ages 10 through 71 months, receiving a developmental screening using a parent-completed screening tool)

The NJDOH will continue to participate as an interdepartmental partner active with the NJ Council for Young Children (NJCYC), the Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge (RTTT-ELC) grant and CDC’s ‘Learn the Signs’ NJ Team. The NJCYC, Infant Child Health Committee has established a priority of improving system connections for children and families with health care providers, community services, early intervention, child care, and home visiting to expand screening (prenatal and child development) in health care and early care and education settings. Grow NJ Kids (GNJK) a Quality Improvement Rating System (QRIS) developed for early learning programs requires the use of a “state approved” developmental screening at Level 2 of a 5 level rating with the expectation that 90% of high needs infants and children participating in GNJK will receive developmental screening by 2019 with an emphasis on using the parent completed child monitoring system Ages and Stages Questionnaires (ASQ and ASQ: SE) screening tools. Implementation of a parent/family portal for easy access to parent-completed early childhood developmental screenings in children < 3 years old (Ages and Stages Questionnaire) through the ECCS Impact grant will permit monitoring of ESM 6.1 (Promote parent-completed early childhood developmental screening) and promote improvement in NPM #6.

The MIEC Home Visiting Program will continue to promote and monitor parent completed child development screening tools (ASQ and ASQ: SE). In SFY 2019 5,805 families with young children participated across all 21 NJ counties. Developmental screening is a required benchmark performance measure and improving developmental screening practices and policies is a current focus on HV evaluation and continuous quality improvement.

Plans for additional expansion of parent completed child development screening (ASQ and ASQ: SE) to all 21 NJ counties is slated to occur in FY20 with the expansion of Early Childhood Specialist staffed within all 21 Central Intake hubs. 

NJ has completed a significant amount of work to create an aligned system of early education data through the NJ-EASEL (NJ Enterprise Analysis System for Early Learning). The NJ-EASEL project will link DOE’s Statewide Longitudinal Data System (NJ SMART), DCF’s Licensing System, DHS’s Workforce Registry (NJ Registry for Childhood Professionals, a component of the Grow NJ Kids data system), DHS’s child care system (CASS), DCF’s foster care system (NJ SPIRIT), DOH’s Early Intervention System (NJEIS), DCF’s Home Visiting system, Head Start/Early Head Start program data systems, and other state early learning and development data collections within the parameters of state and federal privacy laws. NJ-EASEL project is designed to be able to measure outcome objectives of the RTTT-ELC including being able to show that early developmental screening has a direct impact on identifying children and referring them to needed services resulting in positive outcomes for children. The NJ-EASEL data warehouse will serve as the repository through which collected data informs the quality improvement and outreach activities “managed” by GNJK.

Plan for the Application Year – SPN #3: Improving Nutrition and Physical Activity

NJ SNAP-Ed will continue implementation of behavior-focused nutrition and physical education classes so children can make healthy food and lifestyle choices to prevent obesity.  NJ SNAP-Ed and the CAHP’s WSCC School Health NJ project will meet throughout the upcoming year to coordinate and collaborate on improving nutrition and physical activity in New Jersey’s public schools.