The Heller School for Social Policy and ManagementReturn to this website's homepageBrandeis University

Nathan and Toby Starr Center

The Nathan and Toby Starr Center, directed by Marji Erickson Warfield, Ph.D. '91, is focused on the impact on families of lifelong caregiving for a member with mental retardation or other developmental disabilities, the impact of early intervention services on children and families, and the access to health care for children with special health care needs. Among its many landmark studies are:
  • the first systematic analysis of the implications for service agencies of the programmatic needs of persons with mental retardation who are elders;
  • the largest study ever conducted of elderly parents with adult children with mental retardation living at home; and
  • the longest-running study of a cohort of infants and toddlers with special needs who received early intervention services, followed through age 23 years to investigate their developmental patterns and the adaptation of their families.