New Haven Independent

The play group, as joyous for grandmother-caregivers as for toddlers, is a one-and-a half-hour haven, completely free of charge, serving families across the entire economic and social spectrum every Tuesday morning at the Fair Haven branch.

Marge Hansen and her two-and-a-half-year-old grandson Timmy Case are regulars. They actually started going to the program at the main branch — it was established in 1997, as Family Place Initiatives, in part through original funding from the William Graustein Memorial Fund. That original model, which featured psychologists and other health care professionals, many from Yale, working directly with parents and kids, was a six-week model only. However, the neighborhood response, especially in Fair Haven, was so great, that it has continued, library-funded, as a play and socialization group.

“It’s so relaxed and so easy for children. I have my grandson two days a week. All day! It’s a real chance for us to get out. Otherwise he wouldn’t be with other children much.”

Magguri Cameron, the library assistant who runs the program, was here engaged with two little ship builders, Justin and Ricardo. “There’s a tremendous amount of learning taking place here. The socialization of course,” she said, “but also large motor skills.” Never mind that the little builders had placed tires on their ship.

A reporter asked if he could join in. No fools these boys, they decided to drop the ship building project and build a little “casa” on their own. “And literacy training,” she said, “though informal here, always goes on.” Reading aloud is a regular part of the session, and the colorful red and blue rug on which the kids play is decorated in part by amusingly cavorting letters of the alphabet.

Casual, welcoming, democratic kids come to the play group with their grandparents, with their parents, with caregivers from their day care centers, and some with staff from shelters where they may be living.

Tyree Dickey (pictured at right) is one of the head teachers at All Our Kin, an agency recently moved to Grand Avenue nearby the library that trains parents and teachers in provision of high-quality day care especially to young kids in need. “We train day care providers,” Dickey said, “in the whole range, cognitive, emotional and social, physical, and language needs of little kids. And we regularly bring our kids and our teachers over here.”

Natrisha Matthews (pictured at the top of the story) is one of those students. She’s studying with All Our Kin to earn her CDA, a child development credential, which is the start-up credential for a career in early childhood care. “With it,” Matthews said while hugging her charge of the moment, four-year old Amelia Roach, “I can jump start a career. I might one day want to open my own home day care.”

“With a CDA she can work at a day care center,” explained Dickey, “but she would need, for example, an associates degree on top of that, in order to work in the public schools.”

And how was it going for Matthews, who is in the fourth month of All Our Kin’s nine-month program, with half the time spent in traditional classes, and half in taking care of kids? “Oh, sometimes I get up in the morning,” she said candidly, “and it might be blah, blah, but then I get to the kids, and they are so great. Little kids are completely amazing, how much is going on. I mean I’ve babysat before but this is so different. Now I feel I am teaching them. And the amount of learning that goes on!”

Dionne Lowndes is a post-partum nurse by training and she tries to come as often as she can with her two kids, Nigel, age one staring at us, and Leighla, two, to her right. “This socialization here is terrific. For the kids and for me. Many of the moms here are like me, in their late 20s and 30s, often professionals. Still, the problem is day care’s cost. If I had these two in day care, even part time, it would be about $400 a week. Which is too much.” Lowndes, who lives on Atwater Street in Fair Haven, and who comes to a Family Place Play Group after her husband discovered it and started bringing the kids, will soon be juggling day care for three.

“I just wish this program were running three days a week,” said Paula Walker, pictured with her three-year-old Matthew. “It’s exactly what’s needed for moms who stay at home with their kids, only more of it.”

Reached by phone, Jessica Sager, the director of All Our Kin, added, “According to the city’s figures, not even the most recent, the number of slots for infants and toddlers in day care falls short by at least 1,000. And many programs are not the high quality we want for all our children. That’s where our intensive training program, where Tyree teaches, comes in: To help young often poor parents, train as parents and as small day care entrepreneurs themselves, we are spending more and more time sending our students, like Natrisha, out into the community to see its great resources, such as the library’s programs.”

To learn more about the library’s Family Play Group program, call Kathy Hurley (946-8125).