As we all continue to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic I want to provide a few recent updates for our work at Children’s Friend. On July 6th we began our largest summer learning program ever. We have 400 children physically in our classrooms each day. They are both learning and having fun, working to make up for some of the lost classroom time they experienced due to the pandemic.
Also, this month we fully opened up our sites to staff who are vaccinated. While staff continues to work remotely some or all of the time, vaccinated staff are now allowed unlimited access to our sites once again. I am thrilled that we have documentation that 63% of our staff are fully vaccinated.
Because the children we serve are not at an age where vaccination is possible at this time, we have continued the mandatory mask-wearing policy while inside all Children Friend sites.
Our home visiting staff continues to provide virtual visits where necessary and effective, but we have seen a steady increase in the past few months in the number of in-person home visits. We look forward to finding the right balance of in-person and virtual visits to best support our kids and families.
We have also begun to see some WIC families in person at our Independence Square site. We plan to expand in-person WIC services to other sites in the weeks and months ahead.
We continue to work on plans for welcoming visitors back into our buildings and for being able to start accepting donations of goods again. Stay tuned for these announcements in the coming months.
Thanks again for being interested in and supporting the work of Children’s Friend. Stay well and stay safe!
