How Early Intervention Works in Kentucky

First Steps (KEIS): Kentucky's Early Intervention Program

First Steps is Kentucky's name for its Part C early-intervention system, formally called the Kentucky Early Intervention System (KEIS), serving children from birth to their third birthday who have a developmental delay or an established risk condition likely to cause one 1Ref 1U.S. Department of Education (2024).IDEA Early Intervention Program for Infants and Toddlers with Disabilities (Part C).Defines IDEA Part C, the birth-to-three population it covers, and its natural-environments framework.. The lead agency is the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, Department for Public Health — a health agency, the same structural choice some neighboring states make and a different one than states that route Part C through their education department.

Eligibility can rest on a measured delay found in an evaluation, or on an already-diagnosed condition such as Down syndrome or another condition with a well-established likelihood of causing a delay 2Ref 2U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (2024).Part 303 (Part C) — Early Intervention Program For Infants And Toddlers With Disabilities.Establishes the federal eligibility, evaluation, and 45-day IFSP timeline requirements under 34 CFR Part 303.. Kentucky refers to this second path as an established risk condition, and a child can qualify through it even if no delay has appeared yet. Once eligible, the family and the local team write an Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP), the working document naming services, frequency, and setting.

Point of Entry Offices: Where a Referral Goes in Kentucky

Referrals to First Steps go through regional Point of Entry (POE) offices, and Kentucky is explicit that anyone in a child's life can make that call — a parent, a grandparent, a childcare provider, a pediatrician, or any other adult with a genuine concern 3Ref 3Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2024).Accessing Services for Autism Spectrum Disorder.Supports that families can access early intervention without a completed diagnosis and that anyone with a concern can initiate a referral.. No physician's referral or completed diagnosis is required first.

The POE is responsible for coordinating the evaluation once a referral arrives, and federal law requires the state to complete that evaluation and hold the first IFSP meeting within 45 days 2Ref 2U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (2024).Part 303 (Part C) — Early Intervention Program For Infants And Toddlers With Disabilities.Establishes the federal eligibility, evaluation, and 45-day IFSP timeline requirements under 34 CFR Part 303.. A specially trained team works out of each POE, and a family's assigned service coordinator stays involved through the evaluation and every review that follows.

Because Kentucky organizes First Steps around districts tied to local health departments rather than a single statewide intake line, the correct POE to call is the one covering a family's home county — and any POE contacted by mistake can redirect the family rather than turning them away.

The Family Share: How Kentucky Calculates What a Family Owes

Most Kentucky families enrolled in First Steps pay nothing. The state assesses every family's ability to pay at enrollment, comparing family size and income against the Federal Poverty Guidelines, and a large share of families fall below the line where any Family Share fee applies.

For families with higher incomes, the Family Share is a capped monthly amount calculated once per family — not per child if more than one is enrolled, and not scaled to how many services or how often they happen. A family can ask Kentucky to recalculate the Family Share if their income drops or a hospitalization strains the budget. A family with private health insurance can also choose to waive the Family Share entirely by consenting to have that insurance billed instead. Evaluation, service coordination, and writing the IFSP itself are never billed to a family under any circumstance — the Family Share only ever applies to ongoing direct services once a child is already enrolled.

Evaluation, Eligibility, and Building the IFSP

A First Steps evaluation looks at every domain a delay could plausibly affect — communication, cognition, physical development, social-emotional growth, and self-help skills — not only the specific concern that prompted the referral 4Ref 4Center for Parent Information and Resources (OSEP-funded) (2023).Part C of IDEA: Early Intervention for Babies and Toddlers.Describes the referral-to-evaluation-to-IFSP process families go through.. The evaluation team typically includes more than one specialty, matched to what the initial screening and the family's own concerns suggest.

If the child qualifies, the IFSP is built jointly with the family, favoring services delivered in the home or another setting familiar to the child over a clinic visit 1Ref 1U.S. Department of Education (2024).IDEA Early Intervention Program for Infants and Toddlers with Disabilities (Part C).Defines IDEA Part C, the birth-to-three population it covers, and its natural-environments framework.. The plan spells out concrete goals, not just a list of therapy types, and names exactly who is responsible for each one. The plan is reviewed at least every six months, and a family or the team can request it sooner if circumstances change.

A Diagnosis Is Not Required to Start

No. Eligibility for First Steps rests on a documented developmental delay or an established risk condition, not on a specific diagnostic label 3Ref 3Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2024).Accessing Services for Autism Spectrum Disorder.Supports that families can access early intervention without a completed diagnosis and that anyone with a concern can initiate a referral.. Many Kentucky children begin services for a delay in talking, moving, or relating to others long before a family has any autism evaluation scheduled, let alone completed.

That is deliberate: autism evaluations frequently involve waits measured in months, and Part C exists precisely so a child does not have to sit through that wait before getting help. A Kentucky family does not need an autism diagnosis, or even a doctor's suspicion of one, before calling a Point of Entry office to request an evaluation. The two processes can run side by side without either one depending on the other, and a First Steps evaluation finding no delay does not rule out autism, any more than an autism diagnosis is required to find a delay.

Age Three in Kentucky: Leaving First Steps for an IEP

First Steps ends at a child's third birthday, and the local school district takes over under IDEA Part B, which guarantees a free appropriate public education from that point forward 5Ref 5U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (2024).About IDEA.Establishes IDEA Part B's FAPE guarantee starting at age three.. How an IFSP becomes an IEP is the heart of this transition: it is a new eligibility determination, conducted by a new team that includes the school district, under Part B's own categories — autism is one of the specific categories IDEA names 6Ref 6U.S. Department of Education (2000).A Guide to the Individualized Education Program.Explains the IEP team process and that autism is a specified IDEA eligibility category..

Kentucky's POE-based teams are expected to begin transition planning with families well before the third birthday, and a family can ask, ahead of time, which school-district staff will attend that first meeting and what happens to the Family Share once First Steps ends, since Part B services carry no comparable family fee. Records built up during First Steps — the original evaluation, every IFSP update — can be shared with the school district's team so a child is not re-tested entirely from scratch.