Southern Miss Center for Communication and Development Receives Grant from Favre Four

[Newsguy]

Hattiesburg– The University of Southern Mississippi Children's Center for Communication and Development has received a helping hand from one of the most celebrated football players in Southern Miss and National Football League history.Former Golden Eagles’ and current Green Bay Packers’ quarterback Brett Favre’s charitable outreach organization, the Favre Fourward Foundation, has awarded a $25,000 grant to the center. Brett and his wife, Deanna, created the foundation to assist a variety of human service and charitable organizations and causes. The Favre grant to the center is among the first funding earmarked for phase 2 of the children's center renovation project. The renovation will allow the center to begin to implement programmatic improvements dependent on physical accommodations. “We expect to increase our capacity to serve more children with communication and developmental disabilities, and the Favre foundation grant is critical in fulfilling this goal,” said Margaret Buttross-Brinegar, director of the center.“This award is an affirmation of our mission and a great compliment to our teachers. We are honored by the generosity of the Favres and their caring spirit for our community.”Buttross-Brinegar said that university students majoring in speech and hearing who gain valuable training at the center will also benefit from the grant, as it will expand their training from a broader child population. Southern Miss students completing their practicum at the center will also have direct use of the state-of-the-art clinical space, observation facilities and the resource loan library.The mission of the children’s center is to provide an interdisciplinary team approach to the assessment and treatment of communicatively and developmentally-delayed children ages birth to 5. Services are either home-based or center-based, depending on a child’s needs. The center works to help children through its treatment programs, where appropriate, return to a standard classroom environment.“I love that the children's center prepares children to move forward into a normal setting,” said Deanna Favre. “The quality of the program and its staff and students, and the work that they and Margaret (Buttross-Brinegar) are doing is to be commended. It's a great program that the Favre Fourward Foundation is proud to support.”For more information about the Children’s Center for Communication and Development, call 601.266.5222; on the Web, visit www.usm.edu/childrenscenter/ (http://www.usm.edu/childrenscenter/).Observation room – a newly constructed observation room at the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Communication and Development allows parents and the center’s instructors and administrators to observe treatment programming in action (Southern Miss Marketing and Public Relations photo by Steve Rouse)

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