CPTC Gets Grant from Cadence to Open Therapeutic Nursery School.

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 2, 1999--The Children's Psychological Trauma Center (CPTC) announced today it received a grant of $47,000 from Cadence Design Systems, Inc. for the creation of a Cornerstone therapeutic nursery school in the Mt. Pleasant Elementary School District.

The school, which will be known as the Cadence-Mt. Pleasant Cornerstone Site, will assist preschool-age children, who are developmentally, emotionally and behaviorally challenged.

"It's extremely important to reach out to these young children and provide the timely intervention and assistance they need to reach their potential," said Jack Harding, president and CEO of Cadence. "This is a tremendous program, and it will make a marked difference in the lives of these children and their families. Cadence is very excited to participate in an activity that repairs the root causes of academic failure and social burden."

The project will be incorporated into the special education preschool program at Mt. Pleasant School District's Robert Sanders Elementary School, and it will utilize the Cornerstone Therapeutic Nursery Model, designed by Gilbert Kliman, M.D., founder of the CPTC. The program applies psychotherapy methods to developmentally challenged children in their real life settings, such as within a public school special education or day-care classroom setting. This method establishes a powerful therapeutic community that consists of the children, parents, teachers, and therapists-in-the-classroom. These groups work together to get each child on a progressive and adaptive developmental track. The natural classroom community is orchestrated and mobilized by the therapist to achieve a powerful healing influence on these children."

To further aid the project, Harding, who serves on the CPTC board of directors, is personally heading a drive to attract corporate funding for "The Bay Area Cornerstone Therapeutic Nurseries Project." The project would incorporate and expand seven Cornerstone Therapeutic Nursery sites throughout the Bay Area. The three-year project -- which would include service, research, and training -- will help approximately 230 local families with developmentally and emotionally challenged preschool-age children.

The Bay Area Cornerstone Therapeutic Nurseries Project would establish a Bay Area regional resource center for training and research in psychotherapy for preschoolers, including the Cornerstone Method and other methods. This regional resource center will foster further replication of the Cornerstone Method in the community, establish several more sites, and facilitate the comparative study of early clinical prevention and intervention models.

Cornerstone has been found to be useful across a range of disorders, from certain types of autism, development disorders, speech and language deficits, and learning disorders to anxiety, mood, and behavioral disorders. Access to this large range of disorders is enhanced when service is delivered to large public health arenas: special education preschool programs in public schools, headstart settings, child care settings, and homeless shelters.

In the Center's Cornerstone Therapeutic Nursery project in San Mateo, a collaboration between San Mateo County Office of Education and CPTC, preliminary testing has shown a very significant IQ rise, on average, 16 points, for participating children after nine months of in-classroom treatment, which averaged 40 minutes per week. Nationwide, 49 retested Cornerstone patients show an average gain of 12 points, a highly significant advantage over other methods.

"This project represents the best hope for reaching children, at the earliest ages and stages of emotional reaction or interference following psychological trauma and other causes," said Carate Hummer, LCSW, Director of the CPTC, South Bay, located in San Jose.

"The method has already proven its effectiveness in other special education preschool settings for children, and now this project will introduce the method to the South Bay. This is particularly exciting because it provides hope for setting these young children on a better, timely course at a great savings to themselves and their families in emotional suffering and ultimately to society, which will benefit from their eventual contributions and reduced costs in special education services as they progress through school. It is especially worthwhile that the project builds on the capacities of both a public school system and a non-profit agency to save on 'bricks and mortar' while synergistically providing for the best mental health program that could be available for these children."

Hummer will serve as the project director and child clinician for the Cadence-Mt. Pleasant Cornerstone site.

About the Children's Psychological Trauma Center (CPTC)

The Children's Psychological Trauma Center, a tax-exempt non-profit center, is dedicated to mending children's broken hearts and minds in the aftermath of serious psychological trauma or during the earliest stages of emotional and behavioral developmental delay. Its mission on behalf of such children and their families is achieved through direct psychotherapy and psychiatric forensic services, clinical research, and mental health training.

With a strong commitment to public health, special education and community mental health, the center develops and refines clinical models of prevention and early intervention for young, pre-school children or for children newly or recently burdened by psychologically traumatic experience. CPTC has its headquarters in San Francisco and a full regional office, CPTC, South Bay in San Jose. For more about CPTC, view WebSite: http://www.infopoint.com/scv/orgs/cptc