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Starfish Family Services Thrive by Five Detroit is funded by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
Detroit’s home for high quality Head Start education.
Providing a foundation for family success from pregnancy through age five.
Thrive by Five provides exceptional Head Start services for Detroit’s children from birth to five. We operate as a collaborative partnership between four Detroit social service agencies. Our direct childcare service providers include: Development Centers, Focus: HOPE and Southwest Solutions. Starfish Family Services operates as the lead agency and fiduciary.
Our goal is to prepare children for kindergarten and create a foundation for family success though the delivery of an innovative model of Head Start and Early Head Start. Our program is different from the traditional HeadStart approach because we:
- Make unprecedented investments in high quality programing
- Have exceptional levels of professional development for teachers, staff and community childcare providers
- Use leading family engagement techniques
- Operate with low child to staff ratios
- Partner with the HighScope Foundation to provide our curriculum and ongoing educational support, evaluation and training
Our program will benefit nearly 1,300 Detroit children and families annually when we are fully operational. This enhanced programming has been made possible through our five year HeadStart Department of Health and Human Service grant and our private funders.
Development Centers is one of Detroit’s preeminent behavioral healthcare and human services providers. For over 30 years, we have reached out to children, families and adults, striving to make their lives safer, healthier and happier. We are dedicated to nurturing children at risk, strengthening families in crisis and empowering individuals to achieve their highest potential. Our expertise in delivering mental health, early childhood education and employment services allows us to offer innovative and comprehensive programming to over 11,000 community members each year.
In 1968, Father William Cunningham (1930-1997) and Eleanor Josaitis (1931-2011) co-founded Focus: HOPE, an organization dedicated to intelligent and practical solutions to the programs of hunger, economic disparity, inadequate education and racial divisiveness. Through its Center for Children, Focus: HOPE has been a leading provider and advocate for early childhood education since 1987.
Southwest Solutions is nationally recognized as a model of community building. We are a leading provider of both human services and affordable housing and economic development. Our goal is to improve the health and wellbeing of individuals and families, while making southwest Detroit a place where people choose to live because of its vitality and diversity. We help those who were at the margins of society turn the page and write new chapters of resilience and purpose.
Founded in 1963, Starfish Family Services is a private, nonprofit agency serving vulnerable children and families in metropolitan Detroit. Starfish is a leading provider of early childhood development and parenting programs, children’s mental health services, after-school programs, and an emergency shelter for teens and youth in crisis. We have more than a dozen programs at service sites throughout metropolitan Detroit, 350 employees, and a $20 million dollar budget that serves more than 10,000 at-risk children and families each year.
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