ICC’s Children’s Center: One of the Best
The ICC Children’s Center is able to provide the utmost of services and was awarded a Gold Circle of Quality last summer from the Illinois ExceleRate Program. “That is the highest rating we can get [that’s] based on best child interaction [and] it’s based on our curriculum, it’s based on many things” she said. The Children’s Center is also an accredited preschool and meets the Early Childhood Program standards of the National Association for the Education of Young Children. The daycare is open to the public for a standard fee while students and faculty members are given a discount.
The daycare give parents the choice of hourly, full day, or part day hours, “it’s the only child care I know of or preschool that parents can pick their own hours,” Fleming said. “That way, we are putting the needs of the student first” Fleming said.
Students can also come and observe a class or screen a child “A unique feature is that we are a lab school meaning students can make appointments with me and come in if they need to.”
Finding quality child care for children can be a dubious task for parents but at ICC Children Center, “they provide a better environment for learning social skills,” according to Troy Duvendack, who works in the ICC document services department. Duvendack’s son has been going to the daycare for a year.
The center provides play-based childcare with rooms that include play centers meant to encourage sensory, social, emotional, physical, and cognitive development. “They learn through play time so I think for them it is easier to apply what they learn in their daily lives” according to Laura Garcia, an ICC international student from Columbia. “My baby is bilingual now” she wrote. Garcia’s daughter began attending the daycare in 2013. “For me, it is a huge help because I attend ICC full time and it is on my way to class”
The Children’s Center’s staff pays special attention to the needs of both the parents and children. Emily Points, the dean of students at ICC, began bringing her daughter to the daycare when she was 2. “It was the roughest [first] 2 weeks,” Point said. “It was hard as a mom [and] it was hard for her” Points described. “I dropped her off [and] Ms. Ann took her and sat in the chair and rocked her” Points said. “They really comforted me as a parent.”
They also accept financial aid and Child Care Connections to accommodate students that need assistance. “We want to make sure that we’re available to the student” Fleming said. Since 2011, there has been a decline in daycare centers and home care providers because of cuts in state funding. Other providers are forced to close, “partly because of all of the massive [license] regulations” Fleming said. “The mandate the ExceleRate is putting on people has an awful lot of bureaucracy that is very, very difficult if you are running a small child care center.”
Fleming affirmed that Child Care Connections is a month behind in paying the Children’s Center since the assistance program took a funding cut of about $190.7 million last year. “About 25% of our children are Child Care Connection whereas there are some centers that 80% or 90% of their children are Child Care Connection, she said. “They don’t have funding from an extra sources such as we have funding from the ICC umbrella,” Fleming stated.
“The college feels that the child care is important enough to all of the students that they can support us,” Fleming said.