How to acces the model of a child Route from an application level Component?

I have a component that is being rendered in the application template (its use-case being a menu/control-panel).

I have a child resource (i.e. ‘document’) with different subroutes, each with their respective models (‘new’, ‘edit’, ‘index’).

I need the menu component to be able to check if there are any unsaved changes in the child routes before transitioning to another route. Is it possible for an application-level component to access child route model data?

I asked this on IRC and got some push-back on the architecture of the whole thing; ‘data should move from the top down’ but in this case that would either mean moving the menu component down to the document route or moving the document models up to the application route; either of which seems to be less eloquent solution.

The menu component is in charge of other things in the application context, but shouldn’t it also have the capability to at least trigger actions downward? Does this go against certain paradigms in Ember-land? I would gladly appreciate anyone who could shed some light on this.