A new five-year, $3 million grant will bring together researchers from six institutions to analyze how fathers influence children's development. The research team, including CCF director Dr. Margaret T. Owen and CCF faculty affiliate Dr. Raul Rojas, will use data from the decade-long Dallas Project on Education Pathways to explore how father-child interactions influence language development and literacy achievement in low-income ethnic-minority communities... Read More

We are proud to have recently partnered with CNM to implement their CNM-pact data visualization tool. The dashboard will help us efficiently and effectively track, analyze, evaluate, and report our outreach program outcomes. Currently, the dashboard provides a zip code map of the families we’ve served, graphs on the numbers of children and parents served and their demographics, and results of children’s developmental screenings, among other things. We’re excited to start using this tool to better tell the story of our programs’ impacts and to gain feedback to improve the delivery of our programs. Thank you to The Rees-Jones Foundation for their support in helping us implement this tool.

Marco was a young boy who attended our Play With Me program with his mom last Fall. At 30 months old, Marco had very few words and would get upset and throw things when frustrated. He received a developmental screening from our developmental specialists and scored low in all areas, but especially in communication, fine motor, and problem solving. We recommended a referral for special skills training and speech therapy. Marco received a full assessment and qualified for services with Early Childhood Intervention. We recently followed up to check on Marco’s progress. His mom said that he was diagnosed with mild autism and will receive speech therapy. Marco’s mom was grateful for the support we provided in getting her connected to services and in providing activities that she could work on at home with Marco. Today, Marco is so excited to have recently started his first day of preschool!

We continue to provide outreach services for families virtually and are planning to build on the success of the fall sessions and extend our offerings in the spring to more days of the week and more supports for families. This will allow us to engage, train, and support more students in these community outreach experiences. While not the same as meeting in person and allowing parents and children to physically interact with one another, we are doing our best to meet the needs of families and promote their children's development from afar. I'm particularly excited about how the CNM tool will further illustrate our impact and help us better share our stories of the impacts of our work. Wishing you all a happy Fall; please continue to stay safe.