Special Care, Inc

PROJECT PURPOSE

Special Care is the only school of its kind in the state of Oklahoma, serving children, with and without special needs, through high-quality early childhood education, specialized care, and on-site therapeutic services. To further meet the needs of Oklahoma children with special needs and their families, Special Care is expanding its services to allow for addition classroom space to serve more children, as well as create a collaborative, one-stop resource for Oklahoma families who need support for their child/children with special needs. Currently, Oklahoma does not have a one-stop resource solution for children with special needs. When families receive information about a child?s diagnosis, they are challenged to chase answers, finding fragmented services, resulting in less than optimum guidance and solutions. By creating Oklahoma?s first resource hub for children with special needs, parents and caregivers would be able to reach a single point of support and have trained, expert ?family navigators? walk with them through their journey, providing support, assistance in accessing community resources, and improving outcomes for children with special needs and their families.

EVIDENCE

A child will demonstrate a change as measured by their lead teacher's assessment, using standardized development checklists, in the following four development domains as compared to their previous assessment: 20% improvement in social/emotional development 20% improvement in cognitive development 15% improvement in gross motor abilities 10% increase in self-help We expect 50%-60% of enrollees will achieve these improvement goals. Note that goals are set for children across all cognitive, physical, social and emotional skill levels. Students of varying abilities often do not accomplish specific developmental and cognitive milestones within the same time frame as same-age typically-developing peers.

POPULATION DESCRIPTION

According to recent data, people with disabilities were disproportionately affected by the pandemic. Children with disabilities and their parents were additionally impacted by the school closures due to the pandemic. There are 14,385 children under the age of 18 in the OKC metro area with either a cognitive disability, ambulatory disability, and/or a self care disability. Children with special needs face many challenges. One is finding safe and appropriate learning environments and extracurricular activities designed to nurture their abilities as well as meet their needs. Special Care provides such a place thanks to specialized teachers and therapists with expertise in caring for and teaching children of all abilities. We provide accredited early education, preschool, pre-k and kindergarten programs; school-age virtual, after-school, and holiday programs; a full-spectrum of onsite therapy services (physical, speech, occupational, behavioral, and trauma-informed therapy); and parent support programs. Family and parent support ensure that children are in a school to meet their individual needs but also in a school that provides their parents with enough security that they can pursue their careers or further their education. This makes it more likely that parents can maintain full employment and contribute to a family's financial and emotional stability.

PERFORMANCE MEASURING

Project performance will be measured in part by families served by Qualified Census Tract / families served by organizations by QCT and childcare spaces maintained or expanded that adhere to industry best practices in sanitization, bolstered workforce training and credentialing, etc due to the investment. This information will be documented through the reporting and subrecipient monitoring process.

ONGOING INVESTMENT AMOUNT

$

ONGOING INVESTMENT DESCRIPTION

None

ONGOING INVESTMENT REQUIRED

One-time project will not need continued funding