Bright Beginnings

Bright Beginnings, Inc. is a Head Start and Early Head Start site in northwest D.C. that serves children and families who live in homeless shelters and transitional housing. Georgetown University Center for Child and Human Development (GUCCHD) has maintained a team of developmental specialists on-site at Bright Beginnings since January 1993. Georgetown’s team includes two senior faculty members: an occupational therapist and a clinical psychologist. They provide classroom and programmatic consultation as well as evaluation and intervention for individual children and their families. As a University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities, GUCCHD has a strong commitment to community-based services for vulnerable children and to workforce development, so advanced graduate students accompany the faculty members and provide additional services and supports.

Direct services include diagnostic observations, developmental screenings, interdisciplinary evaluations and intervention, all coordinated through an interdisciplinary team. Formal treatment plans congruent with the requirements for District of Columbia programs are developed for children with significant needs and implemented through individual and group therapy. Classroom intervention is utilized to imbed therapeutic strategies in the daily routines. Many of these efforts focus on increasing positive behavioral supports and improving social interaction and emotional self-regulation. Additionally, academic readiness is promoted by facilitating development of language, gross motor skills, hand use, and adaptive abilities. The Georgetown faculty and their students consult with each classroom around specific children’s needs and work with parents and staff. They provide linkages to special education resources and specialized medical care. Emphasis is placed on building capacity to serve vulnerable families.

On-site developmental services and early childhood mental health consultation are important aspects of Head Start programming. For Bright Beginnings, having Georgetown faculty on-site improves access to evidence-based therapeutic services for many families who would not otherwise be able to access evaluations and treatment. On-site consultation provides parents an opportunity to more fully understand their children’s strengths and needs and learn how to provide developmentally appropriate support activities in the home setting. Ongoing developmental consultation allows the teachers and staff to offer appropriate supports to infants, toddlers and preschool children who have significant delays and disabilities, as well as many who have social-emotional issues related to poverty, domestic violence and homelessness.