Universal Developmental Screening in Washington

Key Points

From infancy through the early years, children develop rapidly in how they play, learn, speak, interact, and move. Learn about developmental screening.
Use the Strong Start system to save your child’s developmental screenings from birth to age 5. Learn about Strong Start.
Strong Start is a free, secure, online system for parents, guardians, health care providers, and early care and education professionals in Washington. Sign up or login to your Strong Start account.

What are Developmental Screenings?

Developmental screenings are simple questions that check whether children are reaching developmental milestones in how they play, learn, speak, interact, and move from birth to age 5.

Developmental screenings are important for all young children to check how they are developing over time.

Parents can complete developmental screenings by observing a child doing the activity or by reporting on their ability to complete it. Health care and early care and education providers may also complete developmental screenings.

What are Milestones?

Skills like taking a first step, smiling for the first time, and waving “bye-bye” are called developmental milestones.

Learn more about milestones on the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) website.

Why “Universal” Developmental Screening?

By universal, we mean all children from birth to age 5 should receive developmental screenings. Not just when there’s a concern.

Why Are Early Developmental Screenings Important?

Developmental screenings help make sure that your infant, toddler, or preschooler is developing as most children their age and ready to learn and grow.

Brain growth is fastest birth to age 5
Early support can help a child’s developmental path
Some delays are hard to spot
Developmental screenings help celebrate milestones!

Strong Start: Track and Share Your Child’s Development Screenings Online

Strong Start is a free, secure, online system for families living in Washington. Parents, guardians, and providers can use it, too. Users can:

Store developmental screening results in one place.
Share results with authorized providers and other care givers.
Record notes and referrals about a child’s development
Strong Start helps families, health care, and early care and education providers make decisions together to help children thrive.

Not included in Strong Start:

Completing a developmental screening in the system.
All the screening assessments your child may need.
A specific diagnosis. The screening tools are used to identify concern.
Directly connecting users to resources. Please use the resources page to learn more about what’s available to Washington communities.

Find a screening tool that fits your child’s needs. We recommend consulting with your child’s health care or early child care and education provider for further assessment.

Access Strong Start

Create a Secure Access Washington (SAW) account. SAW protects your personal information and keeps it secure. If you already have a SAW account, then simply log into your existing account.
Add Strong Start to your list of SAW services.
Create your Strong Start account: Select your role and complete your profile.

Why Save Screening Results in Strong Start?

Keep developmental screening records in a single, secure, online account.
No more tracking paper copies. If you change providers or move, simply give the new provider access to your child’s record. Parents and guardians manage the permissions and can update them at any time.
Track your child’s developmental progress over time. Saving results in Strong Start helps create a fuller picture that grows with your child.
Share screening results with others when you need to. A child’s parent, guardian, health care, or early care and education provider can have access to the same information.