07 Dec Health Forward Foundation Awards $65,000 Grant to Children’s Center for the Visually Impaired (CCVI)
Children’s Center for the Visually Impaired (CCVI) recently received a grant for $65,000 from the Health Forward Foundation to provide specialized therapy services.
Health Forward funding will support a portion of the salaries of therapists and specialists who provide services comprising CCVI’s core operating activities. CCVI has been offering specialized therapies since its founding in 1952. These have evolved from teaching adaptations and braille instruction to the comprehensive range of therapies offered today. CCVI is the only agency in the Kansas City area providing specialized instruction, therapies, and family counseling and support for children, from birth to age six, with blindness or visual impairment. Staff members include occupational, speech/language, and physical therapists, as well as specialized instructors in the areas of braille, orientation and mobility, deafblind education, and assistive technology. CCVI’s programming also includes consulting services and supportive family education.
According to the American Optometric Association, 80% of what a typically developing child learns occurs through vision, incidentally, and before the age of five. Visual impairment includes a continuum of reduction in vision, and no two visually impaired individuals are the same. It is critical to capitalize on the very important window of brain development that occurs between the ages of birth to five and provide a child with the skills, tools, and strategies that will offer the best chance of navigating among peers in the sighted world. Each child served at CCVI needs a course of intervention that is unique to his/her functional and developmental needs.
CCVI’s target population is children who are blind or visually impaired, from birth through school age, within a 150-mile radius of the agency. CCVI teachers, therapists, and specialists provide services in the core program areas including the Early Intervention Program (birth to age three), the Preschool/Kindergarten Program (ages two to six), and Outreach Services primarily for school-age children.