FAREWELL GALA SET TODAY AT FAMILY LEARNING CENTER

Family Learning Center will hold a farewell celebration today before closing its doors Friday.

"We are calling on all past staff and volunteers, board members and families served by the Family Learning Center to come together and celebrate the benefits and successes of the center over the past years," said Paul Schneidermeyer, director of children's services for the Community Counseling Center, which oversees the Family Learning Center.

The celebration and buffet luncheon will be held in the Family Learning Center classroom, 402 S. Silver Springs Road, from 12:30 to 2.

The center's closing was announced in November. Officials said it is more cost-efficient to allow other agencies to serve emotionally and behaviorally disturbed children and their families.

Children in the Family Learning Center's program will get help from other agencies but nothing will replace it, current and former staff members agreed.

"It was a place where families could change the way they operated together," said Ida Domazlicky, a former teacher and director at the Family Learning Center. Domazlicky now works with hearing-impaired students in Cape Girardeau public schools.

"I don't think there will be anything that will focus quite like the Family Learning Center on emotional-behavioral problems," said Sharon Sutton, a former Family Learning Center counselor who now works with children in the program through the Community Counseling Center.

Services like Head Start and early childhood education programs are important, she said. "But not everybody fits into those programs."

Schneidermeyer said a multitude of counseling and educational programs have been developed locally since the Family Counseling Center opened in 1981. Among them are Parents As Teachers, early childhood education and Educare. "And they're all taking kids with delays and disabilities and some behavioral problems," he said.

"But there is nothing exactly like Family Learning Center to take its place," he said.

Children now receiving treatment through the Family Learning Center may be referred to several different agencies for the same services, Schneidermeyer said.

"All these little pieces are involved for the same population," he said.

Because of the growth and development of alternate services, "utilization of the (Family Learning Center) program has been down" in the last year and a half, Schneidermeyer said. "But there was a unique aspect to the services that were provided."

In addition, stricter regulations on what types of children could be served meant shrinking funds from the Department of Mental Health, he said. "Where we target our money was a big issue," he said.

"I'm pretty upset" about the closing, Domazlicky said. "I know that from the beginning the program never made money and even lost money sometimes."

"I'm sorry to see it happen," Sutton said. "I think the services will be missed in the community."

Through the Family Learning Center program, children ages 2 to 6 attended half-day classes five days a week to learn to change their behaviors. On average, 51 to 60 children received services annually. Children received counseling and therapy individually "to work out problems with abuse or neglect or whatever," she said, and parents learned new techniques to deal with their children. Family counseling was also available.

The Family Learning Center opened in 1981 as an independent, non-profit agency. In 1989, it merged with Community Counseling Center.