In an effort to help identify special needs in children under 5, CICC has developed, and put on the Internet, the CICC Discovery Tool & Referral System.The Tool consists of a series of age-specific questions that quickly helps identify whether a child may have special needs that require professional attention.

It is estimated that approximately 75% of children under 5 years of age who have 'special needs' are NOT being identified or treated by professionals before entering school. Those not being treated by that time have lower chances of reaching their potential and leading independent lives.

The CICC Discovery Tool & Referral System has been used successfully by thousands of parents of young children, caregivers, agenicies, and professionals in the early childhood education field nationwide.

The Discovery Tool & Referral System provides three types of services simultaneously:

1. It educates parents and staff about normative child development during the first five years of life.

2. It assists in identifying whether a young child may have special needs that require professional attention.

3. It connects users of the Tool to a wide range of professionals, community resources and educational materials.

The Tool includes a series of questionnaires about the development of basic skills in six areas of child development and about potential behavior problems and family risk factors. The latest version of the Tool provides the results in the form of a Developmental Profile that can be printed out.

CICC is disseminating and maintaining the Tool through user fees and developing partnerships with a variety of child-serving institutions. The fee to use the Tool one time for one child is $14.95, and the fee is $24.95 for using the Tool an unlimited number of times per year for the same child to keep abreast on the child's growth and development.

Click here for more information or to take the CICC Discovery Tool

Click here to learn about Partnering with CICC

Led by Martha Lopez, Ed.D., 14 counselors, social workers, psychologists and other professionals learned to deliver CICC's award-winning Los Niņos Bien Educados program at an 5-day workshop held September 20-24 in Bakersfield, Calif.

Dr. Lopez is CICC's senior trainer-of-instructors for the Los Niņos Bien Educados program. The workshop was hosted by the Bakersfield City School District and coordinated by Community Relations Liaison Anna Brown.

Los Niņos Bien Educados is built around the value of raising children to be "bien educados," i.e., well-behaved in a social and personal sense, as well as educated in an academic sense. It explores parental definitions of what constitutes "bien educados" and looks at how these definitions get expressed in traditional family, gender role and age expectations of children.

From this cultural framework, Los Niņos Bien Educados teaches parents a wide variety of strategies and skills for promoting and maintaining those child behaviors that they define as constituting "bien educados" and for reducing those that they see as reflecting "mal educados."

CICC began conducting instructor training workshops in the 1970s, when it developed a national training model parenting program with funding from the National Institute of Mental Health. Since then, over 6000 individuals from more than 2500 organizations have been trained and certified to be Los Niņos Bien Educados, as well as Confident Parenting and Effective Black Parenting instructors.

These and other CICC continuing education workshops, courses, and seminars are approved by the American Psychological Association. CICC is responsible for program content.

CICC's Founder and Executive Director, Dr. Kerby Alvy, is frequently is asked to speak at national, regional and statewide conferences for professionals and parents. When he travels to such conferences he also makes himself available for presentations sponsored by local agencies. Dr. Alvy also teaches continuing education courses and workshops for professionals.

On Tuesday Oct. 26, 2004 at 2 p.m., Dr. Alvy is scheduled to conduct a workshop on "Using the CICC Discovery Tool & Referral System as an Early Childhood Education and Early Identification Methodology" at the The Children's Defense Fund in Washington, D.C., 25 E Street, NW. His presentation is being hosted by the Children's Defense Fund's Early Childhood Development Division. To reserve a seat at this free workshop, call CICC's toll-free number, 1 (800) 325-2422.

Then on Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2004, from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., Dr. Alvy will make a presentation on "The CICC Discovery Tool & Referral System and Culturally-Specific Parent Training" at the offices of the National Education Association, 1201 16th Street, SW. The presentation is being hosted by the National Coalition for Parent Involvement in Education. To reserve a seat at this presentation, contact Sue Ferguson at the National Coalition, (703) 359-8973.

On a personal note...while in Washington, Dr. Alvy will be visiting one of his daughters, Lisa, who is a senior honor student at the University of California at Berkeley. Lisa is doing an internship semester in Washington at the National Organization for Woman. She is pictured above(left)with Dr. Alvy, his wife Mary(right), and their other daughter, Brittany(center), who is just starting her freshman year, also at Berkeley.