Easter Seals builds on great IDEA to benefit more children

Easter Seals (National Easter Seal Society)
Tuesday, 28 November 2000

Marking the 25th Anniversary of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Easter Seals renews its commitment to the law and forges a new frontier to help preschool children benefit from inclusion.

As the nation's largest and oldest organization dedicated to serving children and adults with all types of disabilities, Easter Seals has been advocating for civil rights of people with disabilities throughout its 80-year history. Easter Seals played an important role in the passage and grassroots implementation of this landmark legislation, which guarantees children with disabilities equal access and opportunity to a free and appropriate public education.

Easter Seals partners with thousands of school systems to provide in-school services, such as speech-language, physical and occupational therapies, to help children with disabilities or special needs thrive at school. Easter Seals also helps school administrations identify assistive technology needs for students and consults on individualized education plans (IEPs) to guide students' learning goals with parents and teachers.

Beyond the in-school partnerships, Easter Seals offers early intervention, pre-school and camping and recreation to help prepare and equip children with disabilities for the environment they will encounter at school. These services, beginning at infancy, help to build children's ability, independence and self-confidence.

In an effort to help counter negative attitudes toward children with disabilities, Easter Seals created an in-school awareness program to educate children and adults about accepting and celebrating individual differences. Called Friends Who Care, this first-of-its-kind program reinforces positive messages, and has reached more than 5 million third and fourth-grade students, teachers and parents across the country to date.

Easter Seals and IDEA/Add One

"IDEA has changed perceptions about what children with disabilities can accomplish, and helped millions of elementary and high school children with disabilities achieve their educational goals," said James E. Williams, Jr., president and CEO of Easter Seals. "We want to build on this progress by expanding our Easter Seals Child Development Centers nationwide to provide infants and toddlers of all abilities an inclusive environment to learn and grow."

A New Frontier: Inclusive Child Care

Easter Seals is the first non-profit to address nationally the importance of "inclusive" child care — placing children of all physical, emotional and academic abilities in the same learning environment. Recently, Easter Seals formalized its inclusive child care services into a national network to further strengthen its quality standards and expand its reach to additional communities.

Currently, there are 35 Easter Seals Child Development Centers offering high-quality care for children of all abilities ages 6 weeks to 5 years old, with plans to establish 45 more by 2005.

Both caregivers and parents are learning that inclusive settings benefit all children, regardless of their ability. Child care experts observe that when children are young enough it is difficult to distinguish between a "typically developing" child and one with either a learning or physical disability. Preschool age children of all abilities tend to enjoy the same activities and relate to one another in a similar fashion.

"We believe that exposing young children to individual differences at a very early age teaches them essential life lessons about acceptance, respect, caring and hope," explains Bob Siegel, network director, Child Development Centers for Easter Seals. "What's more, an inclusive environment replicates real life."

Easter Seals' experience shows that children with disabilities significantly benefit from receiving appropriate care along side their non-disabled peers, and are better prepared to enter the inclusive environment at school. Typically developing children often serve as role models, showing children with disabilities age-appropriate communication and social behaviors. The benefit to children without disabilities is that they learn to understand and accept differences.

Easter Seals and IDEA/Add Two

For more than 80 years, Easter Seals has been providing services that help children and adults with disabilities gain greater independence. Our primary services --medical rehabilitation, job training and employment, inclusive child care, adult day services, and camping and recreation -- benefit more than 1 million individuals and their families each year at one of 400 centers nationwide.

For more information, or to contact Easter Seals (National Easter Seal Society), see their website at: www.easter-seals.org