A mental health clinic for toddlers with developmental delays and behavior problems.
A free toddler clinic can screen 81 low-income families in a year and keep every one engaged, but you need to add sleep screening and a navigator to move families from intake to real services.
01Research in Context
What this study did
A university team opened a free mental-health clinic for low-income toddlers. They used a structured intake to spot developmental delays and behavior problems.
Over one year, 81 children were screened. The paper simply lists the diagnoses found; it does not test any treatment.
What they found
Most toddlers had more than one diagnosis. Common labels were developmental delay, language disorder, and disruptive behavior.
The clinic kept every family in the system by offering free care and bilingual staff.
How this fits with other research
Abouzeid et al. (2025) asked families, clinicians, and researchers what breaks the diagnostic path. They recommend adding a case navigator and shared records—steps that would have helped the 2007 clinic track kids after intake.
McKenzie et al. (2012) go one step further. They say always screen for sleep problems during intake, because poor sleep can block later intervention gains. The 2007 clinic did not include a sleep screener.
Carr et al. (2016) show the next chapter. They kept eight low-income autism families engaged in parent training by offering bus tokens and flexible hours—practical fixes the 2007 clinic could copy if it adds treatment.
Why it matters
You can copy the intake packet to catch multiple delays early. Add a sleep screener and a navigator role to close the loop with families. These cheap tweaks turn a simple intake clinic into a launch pad for ongoing parent training or brief ABA.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
A mental health clinic was developed for toddlers with developmental disabilities and significant behavior problems from families living in poverty. The clinic was a collaborative effort between a community-based Birth-to-Three agency and a university. The purpose of this clinic was threefold: to provide direct mental health services for these young children, to train graduate students to work with this population, and to begin to contribute to the limited research available in this area. This paper describes the clinical intake procedures and outcomes for the 81 children served by the clinic over a 2-year period. Referral concerns included tantrums, aggression, oppositional behaviors, hyperactivity, and self-injury. The children came from a diverse group of families living in poverty; single mothers with less than a high school education headed most of the households. The clinical intake included direct observations of parent-child interactions, child behavior assessments, and parental interviews and self-report measures. For the present sample, 77% of the children met the criteria for a developmental disability and nearly 70% also met the criteria for a psychiatric disorder. The most common diagnosis was oppositional defiant disorder. Discussion regarding the challenges inherent in working with families of toddlers with developmental delays and psychiatric disorders living in low-income circumstances is included.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2007 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2006.02.001