Every year, we reach thousands of people in our community. Not just children with special needs, but also their parents, grandparents, brothers, and sisters. This year, as our community comes together to navigate the pandemic our work is more important than ever to the children with special needs and their families that CFEC serves. The current crisis has amplified the daily struggles, and life challenges, that children with disabilities and their families face. Yet, the resilience displayed by all of our children, families, and staff since the spring is inspiring.
In March, COVID-19 took us all by storm. We were forced to close on-site programs with just hours to prepare how we would continue to operate. Our entire team worked diligently to ensure that our children and families would continue to thrive while learning from home. Thanks to the philanthropic commitment of our community, we were able to pivot to virtual programming so that children continued to receive the life-changing educational and therapeutic services they need, and families continued to be supported. Enjoy a few of those moments in our new video here.
Our team dedicated this summer to planning a safe re-opening of our facilities for on-site programs – including designing our COVID-19 prevention procedures, purchasing the personal protective equipment to implement those procedures, and training our staff on these new safety measures critical to ensuring the safety of our students, families and staff – particularly as many of our students are medically fragile and/or immunocompromised. As September ends, we are celebrating six weeks of having students back at The Children’s Center! While many of our family support programs are still virtual, we were thrilled to hold our first in-person Sibshops, for typical siblings, this month!
I continue to be impressed each day with the strength of our children and families. I am energized by the creativity and dedication our teachers, therapists, and family support team bring to redesigning our programs to meet the needs of our “new normal” and launching new programs to meet emerging needs. We are committed to a successful 2020 – 21 school year!
In this together,
Meredith Flowe, Executive Director