Relationship Roots, Inc was founded in 1999 by Terri Emberling, MA, LPC, in response to the dramatic increase in challenging and disruptive behavior among children in a local Head Start program. At Head Start's request, Terri started a therapeutic preschool to provide intensive supportive services in a full-day program for children who were unable to experience success in the regular Head Start classroom.
It became evident that challenging behavior among very young children was not unique to Head Start. Parents and childcare providers heard about the therapeutic preschool called, desperate for help with children whose behavior was difficult to handle. Soon after, Relationship Roots, Inc. opened its doors those in the community in need of a therapeutic preschool program.
Often the children we served had been expelled multiple times from other childcare centers and preschools. These children had the most extreme challenging behavior, including aggressive behaviors (biting, hitting, kicking, scratching and throwing things at others), noncompliance (inability to follow classroom routines or rules), and antisocial behaviors (pushing away any attempts to offer nurture and care, using verbal and physical aggression against those who cared for them). Our mission was to prepare them to re-enter traditional childcare after three to nine months.
In this setting the prototype of the Relationship Roots ECE Program evolved. We knew, from what the rapidly-evolving field of early brain development taught us, that traditional approaches based on behavior modification simply would not work with these children. Our approach focused on providing the children with the experiences they needed to help support positive growth and change in their brains. At the core of everything we did was an emphasis on developing strong, positive relationships between the caregivers and the children as well as among the children themselves.
Amazing progress occurred in the children in our program when we lost our major sources of funding and shut our doors. This incident became a great opportunity. As we transitioned children from our program to other programs in the community, we worked intensely with their new caregivers to teach them the techniques that worked with the children. We heard back from these teachers: “You know, these approaches are great for the kids who came from your therapeutic program. But we have other kids who have less serious problems, and it works for them, too. And it really works well for the kids who are doing just fine! This is the first social-emotional program we've had that works for all our kids! Usually, they work okay for the typical children, but never touch the ones who have issues—the ones who need it the most.”
This was the starting point for our next mission—to bring everything we learned and all the approaches, techniques and social-emotional curriculum we developed through our experience with the therapeutic preschool to the community at large. Our focus, since 2002, continues to be on training and coaching professionals in Early Childhood Education (ECE) about what they need to know regarding children's brains and how to implement a brain-smart program in their classrooms, childcare centers or home sites.
We work with a variety of childcare centers to support them in implementing the Relationship Roots ECE program. We gauge the effectiveness of the program through the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (DECA), which measures the protective factors of initiative, attachment and self-control, and the risk factor of problem behavior. The results consistently show positive improvement in the children enrolled in childcare centers that implement our program, most of whom are very-high-risk children.
Based on these results, the program has recently been recognized as a promising program deserving of rigorous testing by its acceptance into the Service to Science program, a project of the US Department of Health & Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). This thorough evaluation is taking place during the 2008-2009 school year. At the completion of this research project, our plan is to publish the results in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal and submit applications for inclusion on a variety of national registries of proven-effective, evidence-based programs, including SAMHSA's Registry of Effective Programs and Policies (NREPP), among others. The Relationship Roots program will then be in a position to be disseminated on a national basis.