Great Barrington — Community Health Program’s Early Intervention program for developmentally delayed children ages birth to three had to shut its doors last fall after a long-standing state $80,000 per year contract went to the larger Pittsfield-based nonprofit, Pediatric Development Center (PDC).
As a result, PDC recently opened a satellite office here, PDC South, at 924 South Main St.
Pediatric Development Center’s office at 924 South Main St.
CHP’s Early Intervention (EI) program has been funded by the state since 1976. As part of CHP’s Family Services, the program had about 50 clients with a variety of developmental delays, according to CHP’s CEO, Bryan Ayars.
“We knew it was coming. The state is now telling all their agencies that they are looking to consolidate. Their goal is to reduce the number of funded programs by 15 to 20 percent,” Ayars said.
Though smallest in the state, the EI program competed in the new competitive grant process anyway, he said, but the grant was given to PDC instead.
There were no cuts to other CHP programs, nor were there layoffs from this cut, he added. “We offered jobs to any staff who wanted to remain.” Some staff, he said, went on to do other things, and one therapist went to the new PDC office.
It is the children in the program who would have taken the hardest hit, Ayars said, by having to see “new faces,” after leaving their regular therapists with whom they had been making progress. “From a family perspective, most of the children are with these therapists for three years, and [change] is very disruptive and can have an effect on progression.” But Ayars also said any disruption has likely been smoothed out by now.
PDC Executive Director and Housatonic resident Maureen Atwood said that, indeed, the state is “encouraging smaller programs to be taken over by larger ones.”
Atwood is a founding member of PDC, which set up shop in Pittsfield in the early 1980s and has served central Berkshire County ever since. The organization “always maintained a connection with CHP’s EI program,” she said. PDC now has 35 clinicians who serve 275 children in central Berkshire. Atwood said it was “not much” for the larger enterprise to absorb what she says were around 22 children who came from EI.
“I couldn’t hold a team together to serve 22 kids,” she said of EI’s predicament. A former CHP speech therapist and occupational therapist now work for PDC.
It wasn’t easy for CHP, however. “It was an upsetting and emotional loss, since EI has been part of the organization since it was founded 40 years ago,” Ayars said.
CHP’s Women, Infants and Children (WIC) Program Director, Michelle Derr, who oversaw the EI program, said PDC will “definitely serve the needs those children.” The initial concern, she said, had more to do with families already under a great deal of stress having to go somewhere else for this service, and “switch to a different system,” or become “isolated.”
“A lot of these families have some really severe needs and issues, and are dealing with a lot, so to change therapists is hard,” Derr said. “Southern Berkshire is so spread out. And families used to come to one building (CHP) and get variety of services.”
Derr said many of the EI families need various kinds of help that is provided under CHP’s roof; many these same children and families, for instance, are also part of the WIC program, which has 500 families participating.
A play area for developmentally delayed children, ages birth to 3, awaits state certification.
PDC employs a range of specializing clinicians who work with the children mostly in their homes. Based on Berkshire Regional Planning Commission’s Berkshire Benchmark’s data showing 400 children under age three in South County, Atwood said she made an approximate estimate that around 40 of those may need help, since around 10 percent of the population under age three have some sort of developmental issue.
“We want to make sure we find everyone who may need our help,” she added.
“Ninety percent of brain development happens in the first 5 years,” she noted, describing the importance of early intervention. Right now, she added, 16 children under three in Berkshire County have been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). “It is a shockingly high number to us. I’ve been doing this since I got out of college, and 30 years ago, it was one [diagnosis] every 5 years.”
“My hope is that it will be a break even,” she said of the new location, a renovated farmhouse full of light and space. Already a large play space has been set up, awaiting state certification. Atwood said that PDC, however, would not compete with CHP’s playgroups. “CHP has great playgroups,” she said, “and we would like to tap into that.” She said PDC’s playgroups are “therapeutic and specialized.” The plan, she said, is to eventually have playgroups that mix children who are delayed with those who are not.
Of cuts to programs like EI, Derr said that funding these services is increasingly more difficult, partly because of Berkshire County’s low population numbers and travel distances. CHP always raises enough money for Family Services, she said, “but any little grant, any little program we can get is very helpful.”
Derr also noted that the economy is to blame, as well, by creating a competitive grant-seeking environment as programs everywhere try to offset cuts.
“So we rely on the local community to help us out and there are a lot of groups and people that have been wonderful,” she said.
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