May 28, 2010
St. Vincent’s Day Care Center earns national accreditation
Sister Charlita Wills, a Daughter of Charity who taught at St. Vincent’s Day Care Center in Evansville in the 1960s, spends a portion of her recent visit reading to Shane. Click for a larger version.
By PAUL R. LEINGANG (Message editor)
Shane and Jesse may not notice anything new about St. Vincent’s Day Care Center in Evansville, but even a casual observer might be able to see that the two children are in a safe, nurturing environment.
Shane and Jesse are among the 230 children or more whose parents have entrusted them to the care of the facility operated for almost a century by the Daughters of Charity.
What’s new? Accreditation from the National Association for the Education of Young Children.
“Since 1918, St. Vincent’s has provided high quality child care for Evansville’s working families,” said Sister Brenda Fritz, the Daughter of Charity in charge of the day care center. “The achievement of accreditation is the ‘official stamp of approval’ from a nationally recognized leader in child care.”
Sister Brenda says that St. Vincent’s accreditation status “should offer parents an extra sense of reassurance and peace of mind that their children are in a safe, nurturing, place for their very young children to learn and grow.”
And there is another benefit of the new status: “An additional incentive for achievement of accreditation is increased tuition funding from the State of Indiana Voucher Program which assists low income working families with tuition payments.”
St. Vincent’s Day Care Center has provided child care to working families since the early years of the Twentieth Century. St. Vincent’s is des-cribed on its website as “a faith-based, nonprofit organization sponsored by the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul.” The agency was founded by the Ladies of Charity in 1918. The Daughters of Charity assumed responsibility for St. Vincent’s in 1919 and continues to operate it today.
Accreditation took three years to complete, as the staff and board prepared to meet the over 400 criteria in 10 standards required for accreditation. The standards include Relationships, Curriculum, Teaching, Assessment of Child Progress, Health, Teachers, Families, Community, Physical Environment, Leadership and Management.
St. Vincent’s is a licensed child care center serving children ages six weeks to six years from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday, year-round. On a daily average, 230 children are served, coming from a 50-mile radius.
(St. Vincent’s is licensed by the Family and Social Services Administration of the State of Indiana, to provide care for 303 children on a daily basis.)
The facility serves families of all income levels, but is particularly committed to working poor families seeking to attain or maintain self-sufficiency.
Programs and services unique to SVDC include full-time social work services, part-time pediatric nurse, Music and Movement Program, Seton Harvest Community Suppor-ted Agriculture Program and Art Therapy for individual children with special emotional and behavioral needs. The services also include a full time social worker who coordinates counseling for families and children, a nurse, and an on-site speech therapist provided through the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation.