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'Bright Space' to Open at Middlesex Family Shelter

Thanks to a grant from the Connecticut Department of Social Services’ Office of Head Start Collaboration and funding from Bright Horizons Foundation for Children, a new child-friendly play space will open this week at the Middlesex Family Shelter in Middletown, CT. The DSS grant, awarded to the Community Renewal Team, required both assessment and improvement of the children’s environments at four of the region’s family shelters. With this collaboration, and the assistance of many volunteers, the Middlesex Family Shelter is getting a completely new children’s play area.

 Bright Horizons Family Solutions is the world’s leading provider of employer-sponsored child care, early education and work/life solutions. The company operates child care and early education centers across the United States, Europe and Canada. The Bright Horizons Foundation for Children was founded in 1999 to help forward the vision of Bright Horizons Family Solutions to brighten the lives of children, youth, and families in crisis. Bright Spaces is a program of the Foundation, creating dedicated play areas in homeless shelters and community agencies. There are now more than 250 Bright Spaces located in shelters in more than 30 states around the country and Europe, serving thousands of children each year.

CRT provides Early Care and Education to more than 1,400 children in Middletown, Portland, Clinton, Hartford, Bloomfield and Windsor. The Middletown center, located at 44 Hamlin Street, is known as the Idella Howell Center in honor of the longtime executive director of the Community Action for Greater Middlesex County. The DSS grant for homeless outreach brings Head Start enrollment staff to shelters, to facilitate family access to free and high-quality preschool.  

The Middlesex Family Shelter has been providing emergency shelter, transitional housing and related services to homeless families with children since 1988. There are currently seven families with 17 children staying in the shelter. In 2011, the Middlesex Family Shelter became a program of Columbus House.

Since 1982 Columbus House, a 501 c 3 non-profit organization, has been working with city, state and federal agencies along with an entire continuum of non-profit service providers to help get people off of the streets, out of abandoned buildings, off of park benches and into the safety of a shelter. They have expanded services to include comprehensive case management as well as transitional and permanent supportive housing solutions for homeless adults, children & families, adults with mental illness, dually diagnosed women, those in the early stages of addictions recovery and homeless veterans.

For more information about Bright Horizons, please call Betsy Hickey at 860-245-5491 or bhickey@brighthorizons.com  or visit their web site at www.brighthorizonsfoundation.org.

For more information about The Middlesex Family Shelter, Columbus House or how you can be a part of the solution, please call John Brooks at 203-401-4400 x 138 or jbrooks@columbushouse.org

For more information about Community Renewal Team, and our work of strengthening the Middlesex and Hartford regions, please see the CRT website www.crtct.org or call Nancy Pappas at 860-560-5689.