Children's Developmental Services (CDS)

CDS plays a significant role in supporting caregivers by connecting them with community services. CDS Workers work collaboratively with community partners and assist families with following through on recommendations and agreed upon goals.

CDS Workers can assist families with tasks such as filling out applications, attending appointments with families, transitioning a youth to adult services, taking families grocery shopping, attending school conferences, completing respite schedules and accompanying paperwork, making referrals, following up on specialist recommendations, assisting with various transportation needs, signing letters of support and coordinating and supporting caregivers at medical appointments.

CDS Workers are passionate and committed to the families they work with. CDS Workers aim to look after caregivers' needs so the caregivers are better able to attend to the needs of their child/youth. CDS Workers follow up with caregivers to ensure that essential needs are being met and provide them with informal support that is not provided elsewhere in the community. 

Community partners can contact CDS when crisis situations arise and CDS is able to help support families through these difficult times. CDS supports families with very high needs and responds to families in crisis on a consistent basis.

CDS can provide families with financial support to cover various items of need. Examples include alarm systems for safety reasons, pull ups/diapers for school age children, humidifiers, activity equipment costs that require tailoring to specific needs, frequent changing of bedding due to soiling, specialized clothing, transportation as public transportation is not always appropriate for special needs children and youth, and medical equipment not covered by other programs. 

CDS plays a role in helping families break down barriers and find creative ways for services to be delivered. Barriers may include cost of services/assessments, time, limited or no access to transportation and emotions that hinder being able to navigate community supports.

CDS works with families to build natural respite services using the families existing supports. Respite can be in or out of home and provided at times that meet the caregiver's needs. Families can also use funding to support family directed respite to hire people from within their own network to provide them with respite. Helping with the cost of activities is another way that CDS can provide respite to caregivers.