30 Sep CCVI Receives $170,000 Grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation

The Children’s Center for the Visually Impaired (CCVI) was recently awarded a $170,000 grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to create, pilot and implement a school readiness assessment tool for children with blindness and visual impairment and multiple disabilities.

The goal of CCVI’s preschool and kindergarten program is to enhance developmental skills while preparing children for inclusion in public or private elementary schools, as deemed appropriate. The proposed tool will increase our staff’s ability to assess and monitor school readiness skills. This helps teachers of visually impaired students expand and further develop a child’s skills in specific areas. Such areas include social interaction, play, language, emotional development, physical skills, literacy and fine motor skills. The assessment tool will consider appropriate milestones for children with visual impairment and multiple disabilities.

No curriculum or assessment for school readiness exists that considers the needs of children with blindness and visual impairment and multiple disabilities. Instead our team of highly qualified therapists, teachers of the visually impaired, and specialists relies on a variety of tools that measure various components of developmental progress.

CCVI serves children with visual impairments, blindness, and deaf-blindness with fully accredited programs and licensed facilities. In the past two decades, the agency has served more and more children who have multiple-involved disabilities. This includes infants born prematurely or with chronic conditions that impact vision.  CCVI is a licensed childcare facility and the preschool program is accredited by the National Accreditation Council for Blind and Low Vision Services (NAC).