The currently thriving Child Development Center (CDC) of the Houston-Galveston Psychoanalytic Institute (HGPI) is the product of years of hard work begun by three dedicated child and adult psychoanalysts. Their vision of a therapeutic preschool program was stimulated by the gift from a generous benefactor to the HGPI, with the challenge to the faculty to do something creative outside the usual day-to-day activities of a psychoanalytic institute.
At present the CDC comprises several programs, which have developed over thirteen years. In response to our benefactor's initial challenge in 1986, our faculty considered several major projects including an effort to assess the effectiveness of psychoanalytic treatment. After considerable discussion, we decided to invest our energies in the children of the Houston community. George Kochis, Roy Aruffo, and Arthur Farley, child and adult analysts, began to explore how our energies and resources could best be spent. They visited the NIMH project in Rockville, Md., and child projects and child analysts in Los Angeles, San Diego, Cleveland, New Haven, and Raleigh-Durham.
After some deliberation, the group recommended that we establish a therapeutic nursery, beginning by providing consultation to teachers in preschool daycare programs. That initial effort, the beginning of our Outreach Program, was developed in a YMCA childcare facility in 1988. The “Y” is the largest provider of preschool child care in Houston. The three child analysts provided weekly consultation to the teachers and were soon accompanied by psychiatric residents from Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Texas Health Science Center. This was the genesis of the not-for-profit Child Development Center.
The three founders then contacted the Houston Advocates for Mental Health in Children (HAMIC), a group that had encouraged programs for children's mental health for twenty years. That group played an important role in obtaining financial help for our program. In 1991 HAMIC entered into a formal agreement with the CDC to establish a diagnostic-therapeutic program for children and their families. HAMIC strongly urged the institute to form a lay board to raise funds for the program and to administer it. The board members were appointed by the institute's Education Committee. The clinical director of the school is recommended by the board and approved by HGPI; this director reports to the board on administrative matters and to the Education Committee on clinical issues.
In 1992, our generous benefactor also gave us a tract of land which allowed us to build a building that would house the CDC classrooms and offices on the ground floor and the institute classrooms, library, and administrative office on the second floor. Groundbreaking took place in 1993, and we occupied the building in 1996.
The CDC concept and the enthusiastic action of its board have caught the interest of the Houston community, which has responded with moral and financial support. The school has grown remarkably within the past two years. There are now twenty-four children in classes. Diane Manning, an adult and child analyst and professor of education at Tulane University, currently serves as the center's clinical director. Arthur Farley has assumed the role of assistant clinical director.
The center's mission is to further the emotional health and educational development of young children. The CDC helps families support the emotional development of young children through early intervention and prevention programs. By intervening early and comprehensively, the faculty offers help to both child and family at a pivotal time in the child's life.
The CDC offers two programs, the Harris School and the Educational Outreach Program, each with different activities. The Harris School (THS) works with young children of average and superior intellectual ability who have experienced difficulty in learning and behavior in other preschool or child-care centers. The school was named in memory of Hunter Harris, psychoanalyst, generous donor, and first president of the CDC's board. The goal of THS is to help young children become successful educationally, behaviorally, and emotionally.
The children's' problems include delays in speech, impulsivity, excessive fears, temper outbursts, limited concentration and attention ability, withdrawal, low frustration tolerance, and other problems of behavior management and learning. The school uses a team approach, which includes the teachers, family helpers, a clinical director, and an assistant clinical director. THS also has a small administrative staff and a development person. The children learn in this creative and nurturing environment how to manage their behavior, improve their academic functioning, and elevate their self-esteem. They then return to public and private schools.
A critical key to THS's success is a requirement that parents meet on a weekly basis with a family helper to work on encouraging and supporting their child's emotional growth and development. THS staff members communicate with specialists such as the child's former teachers, pediatricians, and psychotherapists providing support services and with other interested professionals working with the child and family on a regular basis. Some children may require additional services like physical or speech therapy, and these specialists are also invited to attend THS “team meetings.” Each classroom serves a group of up to ten children, ages three through seven.
THS operates from mid-August through May, with a six-week summer program in June and July. The curriculum offers the children experiences with the arts, natural sciences, social sciences, math and reading readiness activities, social skills, and learning how to
Edwin C. Wood, M.D., a member of the CDC's board, is a training and supervising analyst for the Houston-Galveston Psychoanalytic Institute and chairs its Candidate Admissions Committee. Constance D. Wood, Ph.D., is a psychologist in private practice, specializing in the treatment of children and families, and a volunteer psychological consultant to the CDC's Educational Outreach Program.
express ideas and feelings. THS views the active involvement of parents as crucial. Parents communicate daily with teachers and work closely with the school's family therapist.
THS now has twenty-five students — nine in the ungraded primary, nine in kindergarten, and seven in pre-kindergarten. Each class will have a teacher and a teaching assistant. Each family has its own family helper with whom they meet once a week. This amounts to twenty-four hours of therapy a week, provided by several THS family helpers. The cost of the therapy is included in the tuition. A sliding scale arrangement is available for the school tuition; currently 50 percent of the families receive some financial aid.
A new primary class began in July 1999 for children six and seven years old. This class is for children who have been identified as gifted who still need help in containing their behavior and elevating their emotional development. Even though they operate at a younger level emotionally and developmentally, they will still do academic work on their individual level, which ranges from first grade through sixth grade.
Workshops for educators are provided by the faculty and staff of THS. In this way educators can learn about the emotional development of young children and how to help parents obtain appropriate services if their child is having behavior problems at home or in preschool. Family helpers also are available for families whose children are experiencing difficulties at home and at school but who are not currently enrolled in the CDC preschool. A team of mental health and educational professionals works with families to help them obtain appropriate services for their young children.
The CDC is also a training facility for the institute. At present four children from THS are in analysis, two with candidates in the institute's Child Psychoanalysis Program.
The second program sponsored by the CDC is the Educational Outreach Program. Volunteer psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers offer weekly on-site consultations at no charge to the teachers, principals, and directors of Houston preschools and day-care centers. Their goal is to increase the educators' understanding of the children's emotional development, help them understand the child better through insight into their families' functioning, and assist them in handling the child in the classroom.
In addition to supporting educators in their work with families and children, some of the volunteers also supervise child psychiatry residents who have the preschool or day-care center placement as part of their rotation at either Baylor College of Medicine or the University of Texas Health Science Center. This Educational Outreach Program now includes forty-three schools and 839 teachers, principals, and directors who are helped to better meet the needs of the 4,654 children in their care.
This is then, truly, a program in which psychoanalysis has become a vital part of education and growth in our community.