Community Stories

Early Childhood Intervention or ECI serves infants and toddlers in the community who may have a delay or a diagnosis and need help with their development Pathways is one of our specialized programs within ECI the pathways program in our ECI program is specifically designed for children that exhibit characteristics of autism.

Calep attends easter seals child care center he's been there for a few months now easter seals would be the top pick for any child care center. We do focus a lot on their development on enhancing their learning progressing in their developmental milestones. Not only do we help the children but we assist the families so whether it be developmental needs whether it be parenting needs whether it be necessities that they are requiring we have it all available to us.

She was very small she was one pound nine ounce when she was born sister was three pounds so Avi had to stay roughly three months um in the NICU. Everybody would tell me like once we walk into the NICU we hear a baby cry we know it's Avi. We know Avi's cry so we got to the point where she had like a reputation in the NICU so we we kind of knew that something was different about her but we weren't too sure so when we got discharged.

Working with the Galavis Vanderpool family, it has been very exciting. We met the family when Clyde was only four months old, and he is currently 21 months old now, so We've seen a lot of progress. A lot of the progress did happen virtually, and I can think of a time when we were doing an activity, and we were promoting his walking. He was still crawling, but mom thought that he was already showing a lot of skills and 
to encourage him to walk.

Help Me Grow Rio Grande Valley provides a centralized access point that connects families to information and services that support their child's early development and educational needs. A family looking for help had to knock on many doors to find the support they needed but now with Help Me Grow, there is a connected network. Often times when families need help, they don't know where to start or even what resources are available. Help Me Grow is the best first call.

Early childhood intervention is a statewide program that supports families with children from birth to 3 years. ECI provides a range of therapy services and supports to help families who have children who have developmental delays, a medical diagnosis, or at risk for delay. The ECI team includes the parents and the early intervention therapists. Together they develop goals to strengthen the baby's development and provides parents the strategies to work with their baby throughout the day during their natural routines with their advice.

A friend of mine told me about her parent educator and she pushed me to get enrolled into the Easter Seals program. My oldest was around 2 years old and I was pregnant of the second child. This is how it started. The parents as teachers program promotes early development, learning, and health of children by providing one-on-one support for parents from pregnancy through age 5. Parents receive individualized home visits, parenting resources, and the support of a parent educator.

I found out about the family resources, I didn't know the the pro many of the programs that they had, but I was invited to certain classes. One was financial classes and uh another was a CPR class. So, program like this really help out families like me that we didn't know that there is counseling. The Hidalgo County Family Resource Center is located in McAllen and serves as a community-based site that provides a wide range of support services and resources for parents and caregivers of young children. The focus of the family resource center is to promote the importance of child development and strengthen the well-being of the family through parenting workshops, health screenings, counseling, and making connections to other community resources.

Jake is able to soar on a zip line, sing his heart out in “Fairlee’s Got Talent” and savor new foods in a safe and nurturing environment. Meanwhile, his parents, Jen and Frank, get the break they need.

From the very first visit, I felt heard, respected, and hopeful for my son’s future. I’ll never forget the emotional moment when he sat up on his own for the first time.

HIPPY stands for Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters. It's an evidence-based school readiness program that follows a curriculum that's developmentally appropriate and encourages parent-child interaction. During the pandemic, I was a little bit hesitant about sending my kids to school. So I started doing some research on virtual school so that they wouldn't stay behind since I wasn't going to be able to send them to school that year. So on Facebook I was actually able to find Easter Seals and they were like offering the program for virtual schools or for virtual classes and of course I called and contacted them.

Families enrolled in our program benefit greatly with a range of services. So that can be from their monthly home visit to access to meeting other parents that are group connections, linking them to family resources in the community such as childcare, counseling, basic needs support. For every model visit, our families receive information about three areas. The first area being parent-child interaction. So our parent educators take in an activity and they coach the family in being able to do that activity together.