The heads-ed under 6: piloting a new communimetric mental health and developmental screening tool for young children

Communimetric screening tools are important as they help clinicians identify and communicate their patients’concerns, level of need, and corresponding clinical action. Few such tools exist for clinicians to identify mental health and developmental needs in young children. We wanted to evaluate a new communimetric screening tool, the HEADS-ED for children under 6 years old, in a sample of children whose caregiver contacted a regional coordinated access and navigation program in Eastern Ontario (1Call1Click.ca). We hypothesized that the HEADS-ED would help program intake and access navigators match level of need to services based on a stepped-care model.