Center for Care Coordination

Connecticut Children’s Center for Care Coordination (the Center) empowers families to advocate for their children and connects families to appropriate medical, behavioral, educational, legal and social services.

Care coordination is a team-based approach designed to meet the needs of children while also strengthening the caregiving capabilities of families through the Protective Factors Framework. It addresses the medical, social, developmental, behavioral, educational and financial needs of families to achieve optimal health, development and well-being for children.

The Center works in partnership with care coordinators across the state to provide local and focused care. If you are unsure of who your regional care coordinator is, the Center would be happy to help you make that connection. Call us at 860-837-6200 or email us at center [at] connecticutchildrens.org.
 

Services for Families

The Center strives to facilitate comprehensive care to meet the medical, social, and mental health needs of children and their families. Our team is available to help bridge the gap between families and the services they need to stay healthy. In an effort to connect all families to supports across our hospital’s care continuum, the Center also leads our inpatient nurse case management team who support families discharging from an inpatient hospitalization, as well as our clinical social work teams who provide support, evaluation and care as families receive care in our emergency, inpatient and outpatient settings.

Through grants from the Department of Public Health, community care coordination services through the Center are complimentary for children and youth birth to 21 years of age (21+ for some patient populations). Our community care team is focused on patients and families looking for support, including those with medical, developmental or behavioral conditions and those needing help with basic supports. Our services can include:

  • Global needs assessment (medical, behavioral, educational, basic needs, developmental, etc.)
  • Review and support around discharge recommendations
  • Benefit review and coordination
  • Linkage to community resources (after school programs, job training, social supports)
  • Connection with local behavioral health resources
  • Referrals to state and local programs
  • Communication between care providers
  • Transitional planning into adulthood (medical, educational, vocational, community)
  • Legal and educational advocacy
     

Services for Community-Based Primary Care Providers

The Center works with pediatricians across the state to ensure their patients are well supported within their community, so providers can focus on patient care.

The Center is proud to be the home of several innovations including the Care Coordination Collaborative Model. The Model brings together care coordinators from various child-serving sectors to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their work within a comprehensive child health system, decrease the duplication of services and unnecessary visits, and to advocate for policy level solutions to ensure families have access to beneficial services. Additionally, the Center has published on the benefits of Care Coordination in a behavioral health emergency department setting and been building our behavioral health coordination expertise in recent years.

Today, our care coordinators participate in a range of community collaboratives as well as host an annual Care Coordination Forum to ensure that our team is ready to lead through best practices.
 

Contact Us

For more information about the Center, call 860.837.6200 or toll-free 877.835.5768, or email us at center [at] connecticutchildrens.org.

Referrals & Resources

Tools for Anxiety and Issues Related to School Violence

Connecticut Children’s Center for Care Coordination (the Center) has seen an influx in referrals for kids with anxiety surrounding instances of violence in schools, particularly school shootings. Although high-alert behavior is a byproduct of mass tragedies, it got us thinking about how best to communicate with our families about these incidents. In our quest for best practices, we came across a guide “Talking to Children about Violence: Tips for Parents and Educators” from the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP). The guide goes over when to talk to children, the best tactics to use, and how social media plays a role.

The Center was also concerned about our patients with special healthcare needs. What are schools doing, or what can they be doing, to make sure all children stay safe when terrible things happen? Right now, there is not a national model for school-based emergency preparedness (Clarke, Jones, & Yssel, 2014). That being said, parents and educators must advocate for a specific and individualized plan that is unique to fit each student’s needs through their Individualized Education Program or 504 plan. Read more about what strategies and plans are suggested.