About Special Care
About Special Care
Special Care serves children, with and without special needs, through year-round, high-quality early childhood education, specialized care and on-site therapeutic services. Our mission is to nurture all children with and without special needs in safe, inclusive and supportive environments through education, therapeutic intervention and community acceptance.
With an average three adults in each of our 12 classrooms (a 4:1 student-teacher ratio) and twelve therapists working with children, many children who attend Special Care surpass the development predicted for them, some in significant and remarkable ways. On-site occupational, physical, speech and behavioral therapy gives families a “one-stop” opportunity to meet the needs of their child or children. Therapists, teachers, children, and parents work together to create activities, environments, and communication habits that best suit each child’s development. Barriers such as inaccessible equipment, social isolation, teachers without specialized training in special education, difficulty of transportation from school to after-school care, and limited therapeutic intervention often affect this population. Our program removes these barriers for our children and their families.
We divide our program into three components: Early Childhood Education, Specialized Care and On-site Therapeutic Services.
Early Childhood Education – Special Care provides high–quality, year-round early childhood education to 135 children ages birth to five. Research has shown that the early years in a child’s life—when the human brain is forming—represent a critically important window of opportunity to develop a child’s full potential and shape key academic, social, and cognitive skills that determine a child’s success in school and in life. At Special Care, we provide young children with the tools they need for future school and life success. Our program is nationally accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children and AdvancED. We provide a Lead Teacher (with at least a Bachelor’s Degree in the field of Early Childhood Education or Special Education) as well as two Assistant Teachers, creating very low student to teacher ratios. Our integrative program provides unique opportunities for both children with special needs and typical children. Both populations gain experiences they otherwise would not and develop more fully cognitively, physically, socially, and emotionally.
Specialized Care – Special Care provides year-round before and after care for students, ages birth to 21 years of age (66 students). We also provide all-day summer and holiday programs for school-aged students. In typical childcare settings, a child would “age out” of their program around 10-12 years of age, when the child could presumably be of age to stay by him/herself. Due to the diverse needs of the children we serve at Special Care, they are not able to be left unattended or care for themselves while their caregiver is at work. The students we serve have significant needs and our staff are trained to meet those needs on a daily basis.
On-site Therapeutic Services – Special Care provides on-site physical, occupational, speech and behavioral therapy to our students. Therapy is critical for children with special needs in order to reach their full potential. With 11 therapists, students are able to receive high-quality therapy when they attend Special Care. Therapists are able to work with teachers to be able to bring what a student is working on in therapy to the classroom. With their children receiving therapies at Special Care, families are able to go home and spend time with one another, rather than rushing from one therapy appointment to another. In addition, Special Care has two Facility Dogs, Nacho and Costa, who are trained service dogs. Nacho and Costa provide support to the classrooms and therapists throughout the day.