Ounce of Prevention

Our Ounce of Prevention program is running smoothly thanks to donors like you. Without your support, we would not be able to help the nearly 300 children we serve each week.

ICEC has been busy securing outside funding for this very important program, but our core donors continue to make up our biggest segment of support.

One of the aspects of the Ounce of Prevention program you may not know about is our Parent Night Out Respite Program. In collaboration with our staff members and volunteers from National Charity League and local organizations, we provide respite (a fancy word for 'date night') for our families. 25 to 30 children are dropped off at our center on Friday nights for 3-4 hours. We provide daycare for the children in our program and their siblings so their parents/caregivers have a regular time to shop, go to a movie, and get a break in their caregiving duties.

Daycare is very hard to find for disabled children and many parents are hesitant to leave their special needs child with an untested sitter. We are a safe and trusted environment for these parents, and we keep the costs to a minimum by utilizing community volunteers to watch the children, with supervision from our staff. We reinstated this program in 2013 after a hiatus of 2 years due to lack of funding.

Our next Parents' Night Out will be on Friday July 17th from 5:30 pm - 8:30 pm. If you would like to volunteer, please contact our Director of Development Katie Willis at katiew@iceckids.org.

We thank you again for your continuing interest and donations to ICEC. We wouldn't be who we are without you!

ICEC's Ounce of Prevention program continues to be the only one of its kind in the Orange County area. Providing weekly family-centered early intervention classes and specialized services for children who may be at risk or have known developmental delays, the program is provided free of charge for families, regardless of  economic background, with the help of a generous grant from the Assistance League of Laguna Beach.

The State of California continues to reduce funding for the children but our funders have continued to support the children we can serve and enable the amount of services they receive.

It is crucial for parents to intervene early in their child's development. Most families suffer tremendously both emotionally and financially when a developmentally delayed child is born. Early Intervention focuses on special instruction and therapy designed to help infants and toddlers with "special needs" improve their developmental skills. Our mission is to assist each developmentally delayed child in achieving optimum developmental potential. Our Motto is to ‘Treat Special Needs with Special Care” - this is accomplished by providing therapy and intervention designed for each child's abilities, while offering emotional support, training and resources to the total family.

The Ounce of Prevention Program was created to provide developmental assessments and early intervention services to at risk infants and toddlers who have been eliminated from the social services system due to cuts in to the California Department of Developmental Services and public schools. The program is designed to:

• Assess developmental levels of these infants and toddlers
• Monitor development of children with delays in development
• Provide developmentally appropriate services specifically for these high risk children, their parents and to high risk children born to adults with developmental disabilities.

Our early intervention and education services allow our children to walk to elementary school rather than riding the special education bus, being mainstreamed into regular classrooms without an aide, and being fully included in academic and athletic activities.

We are so indebted to our gracious donors and hope to continue the services we provide well into the future with their help.