Children, Youth & Family Services is all about providing children with what they need to become healthy, happy, productive adults.

Early learning to stimulate young children's development

• We work with new moms helping them learn to bond with their baby and to stimulate their healthy development. Do you know that babies are born with all of the brain cells that they will ever have? Their experiences teach the brain cells their jobs. There is a growing body of research regarding the importance of brain development during the first three years of life.

• We have an early literacy program for at-risk preschoolers. We know that the average child from a low income family arrives at kindergarten with a vocabulary of just 5,000 words, while the average child from a middle or upper income family of the same age has a vocabulary of 25,000 words. The low income child’s vocabulary is that of a typical three year old. Thus, even if that child is successfully completes each grade level, making one year’s progress at a time, they will always remain two years behind their peers.

• We teach preschoolers life skills. We help them learn how to get along with others, how to manage their conflicts, how to share and talk about their feelings. More and more research is showing that social emotional skills are critical to school success.

• We work to improve childcare in our community. Many preschoolers spend up to nine hours a day in childcare. We train providers in best practices so that they might provide a stimulating environment for the children, offering them opportunities to learn.