The Project started in November 1998. The work on this project helped me to set contacts with International Society on Early Intervention, visit Early Intervention Centers in Budapest and USA, observation Early Intervention Network organization in Minneapolis and establish contacts with professionals in this area.
 
In January 1999 the Early Intervention Center Group was created, the base of which were doctors and psychologists with guest participation of other professionals. We have developed our working programme that has been adopted by the Ministry of Health of Ukraine.  The statement on the cooperation between the group’s specialists and their American counterparts has been included in the Kharkov-Cincinnati memorandum on sister-city cooperation

The work on the research Project confirmed the acute necessity of practical work with real children and their parents, and creation of an operational Early Intervention Center in Kharkov.
We started practical work with children in July 1999 and it has been conducted at the Neurological Department of City Perinatal Center where children at risk with perinatal pathology of the nervous system and prematurely born are. They are aged between 10 days and 4 months. Now we render psychological support to mothers and members of families, perform a child’s development diagnostics and implement parents education informational program. This kind of help has been given to 95 families during 4 months (July – October, 1999). By now we have started home visits to two families.
 
In order to organize such a Center the Ukrainian Research Institute of Children and Juvenile Health Care Institute allocated us premises which need renovation and equipment to be put in.

The interaction schemes of the Early Intervention Center with the existing system in the city were created, the program of screaning-diagnostics of the children’s development from the first year of their lives was suggested. And now it is being discussed with the City Health Care Department.

On the basic of the programme ‘Small Steps. An Early Intervention Program for Children with Developmental Delays’ (by Moira Pieterse and Robin Treloar with Sue Cairns), translated into Russian due to the efforts of the Dawn Syndrom Association (the city Moscow), instructional programmes for parents and specialists were created.
Thus, the research Project supported by OSI initiated the process of creation and development of the idea of modernizing service system in Kharkiv, which now needs its organizational shaping – the creation of a working Center.