Enhancing systems of care for children with medical complexity - through its "take charge! Medically-based parenting model childkind provides critical in-home training and supports for families with…

Enhancing systems of care for children with medical complexity - through its "take charge! Medically-based parenting model childkind provides critical in-home training and supports for families with children who have medical complexity, ages 0 to 18 (male or female), who live in low to extreme-low income households. Childkind's model is inclusive, serving all families whether they are biological, adoptive, relatives, or guardians in one- or two-parent households. Pediatric hospitals, medical providers, schools, or child welfare agencies refers them to childkind. The individual circumstance of each family childkind serves is as diverse as are the scores of medical diagnoses among their children. There are, however, factors common to the families of these children: 1) poverty and extreme poverty reinforced by, or because of, the extensive oversight and care requirements of a child with medical and developmental complexity; 2) social and economic isolation; and 3) difficulty with appropriate behavioral interventions and/or compliance to the daily care requirements of the child. Childkind's target population has a disproportionate share of healthcare and social service costs. The excessive costs come not only from the child's underlying medical condition or developmental disability, but also from health disparities: isolated communities, lack of support services, care compliance barriers, poor transportation, and inability to maintain employment, extreme stress, and other causes. A child with medical complexity and/or developmental challenges can end up in foster care merely because a parent could not access services to which they qualified or does not have the parenting skills to address challenging and complex situations properly. Likewise, children are now in state custody because their mother or father was functionally illiterate and could not understand a doctor's prescriptive regimen of care.