Program supports child with behavioral concerns, helps mom find right child care setting

   Lisa Owens was at her wit’s end. Her foster son, 3-year-old S’aire, wasn’t adjusting to his new child care facility.  Lisa, who had fostership of S’aire since he was 5 months, received calls on her job almost daily from his new child care center.

   Usually a call from the child care director would mean the cable customer service representative needed to pick up her son because he was misbehaving and disrupting his pre-school classroom.

   “It was so stressful because the behavior his teachers were describing had never happened at his former child care center,” she said. “In the first month, I was called out of work several times to pick him up, and I was afraid I was in jeopardy of losing my job.”

   Lisa made the same decision many parents face when child care costs rise at a center. At the time, Lisa couldn’t afford the 10 percent annual cost increase with two children enrolled there and made the tough decision to move S’aire from Creekstone Creative School to a less expensive center. 

   S’aire didn’t transition to his new center well.  Although the NC Early Intervention Department, known as the Children’s Developmental Services Agency, found S’aire to have some behavioral challenges and a speech delay, S’aire didn’t create major disruptions in his former class.  However, his new classroom was open with dividers, and the other classrooms on each side were visible through the dividers. This new open environment distracted S’aire; he wasn’t adjusting to his new teachers and began having temper tantrums in class.

   Scared about the daily interruptions on her job, Lisa conducted her own research and found Durham Inclusion Support Services (DISS), a program delivered through Community Partnerships, Inc. that is funded by Durham’s Partnership for Children, a Smart Start Initiative. DISS works with children that have a broad spectrum of behavioral, emotional and social challenges in child care settings to help teachers and parents manage these children and provide an inclusive environment. The program’s goal is to support the child, help the teacher find solutions to disruptive behavior and retain the child in the child care setting reducing child care expulsions, which in recent years have been on the rise. 

   “S’aire was very close to being expelled from the center,” said Jena Haire, a DISS counselor who worked with the Owens family said. “He was a child that was easily distracted, and after a few classroom observations, I could tell that the level of activity in the center was too much for him. He needed a calmer environment.”  

   Jenna worked with S’aire and his teachers at the new site to support S’aire’s outbursts. Although S’arie made some progress over the course of the therapy sessions by exhibiting more self control, he still disrupted the class daily. Jenna made the recommendation to S'aire that he would function better in a center that had lower noise levels and classrooms rather than an open space with dividers.

   “It’s amazing how children with not typically developing nervous systems can completely have meltdowns if they are in a space with larger groups of children,” said Jenna. “The child care environment is really key in supporting the healthy development with children that may have sensory integration disorders.”

   Lisa began to make arrangements with the director at Creekstone Creative School to have S’aire reenroll there. “They were able to work with me,” She said. “Within weeks of being back at his former child care, his behavior improved 100 percent.”