Back to School Week

It is Back to School Week at CII, and it is great to see the early childhood services programs moving ahead at ‘full speed’.

As you know, the CII ECS division offers parents a number of early childhood program options. They include part day/part year center based services, full day/full year center based services, full year home based services (children up to 3 years of age), and full day/full year services in family child care homes under contract to CII. Our overall goal is to ensure that all children in our care and their parents, regardless of program option, are ready for a successful school experience by the time the children enter kindergarten.

So what are we looking like this year? ECS projects will serve nearly 2,500 children up to 5 years of age in the current year. Approximately 500 of these children are in our home based program, including First 5LA funded Select Home Visitation in SPA’s 6 and 8, almost 200 are receiving services in contracted family child care homes, and the rest are placed in one of CII’s 30 early education centers. We are excited this year to have added two new preschool buildings:  Our Compton Blvd. facility will serve 30 children: 6 infants and 24 toddler age children; our Western Avenue facility will serve 8 toddlers and 20 Head Start age children. Both centers recently began operations.

Summer months are important to ECS program operations, and this year was no exception. A number of key events took place:  recruitment and enrollment of new children and families, hiring of new staff – over 40 new staff were hired in the last four months, restocking classroom supplies, refurbishing playgrounds and classrooms, and finally, comprehensive training for classroom and non-classroom staff. Thank you all for your contributions to all of these efforts. They are not only very much appreciated, they are essential to our success.

This year ECS, in line with “One CII” strategic initiative, is already working on two key program efforts that will involve collaboration with CII’s Early Childhood Behavioral Health Services and Project Fatherhood.  Our goal for the current program year is to assess, refer and serve 100 children/families through our mental health services and to initiate a series of program activities with Project Fatherhood staff that will engage fathers currently enrolled in ECS.  We look forward to two very successful collaborations that will benefit the children and families that we serve.

Stay tuned! We are always working on something!!

– Manny Castellanos, Jr., Ed.D., LCSW, Senior Vice President Programs