Champaign County Early Head Start Collaboration In the summer of 2010 Champaign County Head Start/Early Head Start began a collaboration with The Center for Women in Transition to provide comprehensive services for homeless children and families For this collaboration CCHS provides a model of combination programming to Early Head Start children and their families who live at the homeless shelter. This combination model includes 96 classroom experiences and 24 home visits annually and also allowed CCHS to have its own space set up just for Early Head Start infants/toddlers that is used for the classroom experience CCHS , as well as, a combination mentor on staff whose office is located at the shelter.  This collaboration has brought many benefits to both parties.  One of the benefits includes offering a developmentally appropriate center based experience for homeless infants/toddlers twice a week.   In this setting, children feel safe, nurtured, loved, and cared for in an environment that offers consistency with the same primary caregiver each week.  The Center for Woman in Transition has put a real emphasis on the mothers in the program volunteering in the room, participating in trainings, and participating in the CCHS policy council.    The mothers at the shelter, who are enrolled in Early Head Start, not only benefit from their child receiving center based services, they also benefit from the biweekly home visits in which the parent along with the combination mentor work on strengths and needs, but most importantly, the goals for their family. CCHS helps families obtain goals such as receiving a GED, finding employment, and providing them with appropriate child development modeling and training, but the efforts of our two organizations working together has made for a healthier and safer place for children and families of this community.