The EveryBuddy Program: an integrated after-school program

Children Today, March-April, 1991 by Shira M. Ledman, Betty Thompson, Janet W. Hill

"He called me 'Mom' for the first time in his 6 years after learning it from his nondisabled peers in the EveryBuddy Program. I tell everyone about it. This is the greatest thing that's ever happened to me and my kid."

"It was the first time I had ever been able to work a full-time job because day care had previously been unavailable."

These comments from parents of children with multiple disabilities reflect the enthusiasm with which families have received the EveryBuddy Program, Virginia's new integrated after-school day care/recreation program.

The Historical Perspective

Chesterfield County, a suburb of Richmond, has a population of approximately 209,000 and is reported to be one of the fastest growing counties in the country. In large part this growth can be attributed to an influx of young families with children seeking a quality school system and affordable housing, both of which Chesterfield County offers. As is the case in other communities with large numbers of families with children, day care is a critical service need. The day care industry in the County is a flourishing one that at times has the luxury of turning away business or implementing waiting lists.

In Virginia, local Community Services Boards are responsible for planning and implementing services for persons with mental disabilities and their families. With the rapid expansion of the County's population, Chesterfield Community Services Board was confronted with dozens of requests for after-school day care/recreation programs for children with disabilities. Typical of the concerns expressed by parents of these children was the refusal of "regular" day care centers to serve their children and the inaccessibility of the one "special" day care center based 25 miles away in another county. Moreover, parents stressed their concerns about the isolation of their children from their nondisabled peers as a result of the children's segregated school placements, which were disability-based rather than neighborhood-based.

Chesterfield County's Solution

In 1989, the Chesterfield Community Services Board explored models for providing after-school day care/recreation programs for children with disabilities. A cost comparison between "special" centers (disabled-only) and "regular" after-school day care programs was carried out. The results indicated that initiating a "special" center program would necessitate a cost of approximately $ 10 per hour per child, which was prohibitive to families and the Agency. Equally as important a consideration was the Board's commitment to consumer-driven services provided in regular community settings. Therefore, with the help of a mini-grant from the Virginia Institute for Developmental Disabilities Respite Resource Project, the EveryBuddy Program was developed.

The EveryBuddy Program is a cooperative effort of Chesterfield Alternatives, Inc. (a private nonprofit corporation), Chesterfield Community Services Board, and the South Richmond-Chesterfield YMCA. The underlying philosophy of the Program is that children with disabilities have the same rights as other children to receive quality after-school programming. Moreover, both groups benefit enormously from regular contact with each other. The EveryBuddy Program's mission, as stated in the original grant proposal, was "to build capacity and initiate cooperative efforts among Chesterfield Alternatives, Inc., Chesterfield Community Services Board, and the South Richmond-Chesterfield YMCA to provide well supervised, after-school services to children with multiple disabilities integrated directly within the regular, after-school community YMCA operated programs."

This was accomplished by adding specially trained staff to three of the YMCA's after-school program sites to provide the individualized support needed by children with disabilities to participate in the program alongside their nondisabled peers. Children with disabilities were then integrated in natural proportions to the total number of children at those pre-selected sites. During the first year of the project, the additional staff salaries were funded by the mini-grant so that the extra costs were not passed along to the parents of the children with disabilities. In the subsequent year the YMCA has taken on increasing financial responsibility for the program.

Key Ingredients of EveryBuddy's

Success

There are a variety of factors to which we attribute the success of the EveryBuddy Program but two critical elements stand out. The first is the utilization of a Parent Coordinator. Our Parent Coordinator has had multiple roles with the project, beginning with serving as a consultant to professional staff during the planning and implementation phases. In this capacity, she provided valuable input to ensure that parents' needs and concerns were given full consideration. Throughout the early phases of the program, the Parent Coordinator assisted with numerous details, always representing the parents' interests.