THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 27, 1996 TAG: 9604270338
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH SIMPSON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
A center where children slow to walk or talk can play with kids who are on a faster developmental track is being proposed by a group of Chesapeake parents and child development specialists.
The Child and Family Development Center would have a day-care program with staff trained to care for special-needs children. Part of the enrollment, however, would be reserved for typically developing children.
One of the goals of the center is to train other day-care providers to care for special-needs children in child-care settings throughout the community.
A group called Friends of Chesapeake Infant Services is trying to raise $1.5 million for the center, which would be in Chesapeake. Tidewater Community College officials have agreed to provide 14 acres for the center at the Chesapeake campus, if enough funds are raised by September 1998.
The FOCIS group, which includes parents, teachers and child development specialists, has raised $20,000, and is holding a fund-raiser Sunday for the facility.
The proposed center would house the Chesapeake Infant Intervention Program, a Chesapeake Community Services Board agency. The group works with young children with disabilities, mostly in home-based settings.
Sally Bober, a Chesapeake Infant Intervention Program service coordinator, said many parents they work with have had trouble finding day care for their children.
Some day-care center directors will tell parents their staff isn't trained to care for children who need to be tube-fed or older children who are not toilet-trained. Also, some centers will keep children behind in younger classes because they haven't learned to walk.
Richard DiPeppe, director of community services for the Endependence Center, said the training aspect of the new center sounded promising. However, he is concerned that other day-care centers will steer all children with disabilities to the center. ``People with disabilities should be able to go where everyone else goes,'' he said. The Endependence Center assists people with disabilities.
Child-care centers are required by the Americans With Disabilities Act to accept children with special needs. But many parents of children with disabilities say finding the right fit can be a struggle.
Amber Snead, for instance, had her son, Conner, at a Chesapeake day-care center for the first year of his life, but when he still couldn't walk at the time his classmates were transferring to the toddler class, she was told Conner wouldn't be moved up.
She wanted him to be with his peers, so she found another center, Great Bridge Child Care, where Conner could be with children his own age. Two-year-old Conner has developmental delays because of a chromosomal disorder.
The Chesapeake school system has an education program for children with disabilities starting at the age of 2. That program, however, does not include children without disabilities.
``This would give parents another option,'' Bober said. ``Some parents might prefer having children in self-contained classes of special-needs children. But this gives them another option.'' MEMO: A fund raiser for the Child and Family Development Center will be held
Sunday from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. at Blakeley's at 414 S. Battlefield Blvd.
in Chesapeake, with a performance by the Jailtones. For more information
call 482-2121. A $10 donation benefits FOCIS. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by GARY C. KNAPP
Amber Snead worked hard to find the right day care for her son,
Conner, 2, in Chesapeake.
by CNB