Southeast center's Early Head Start to close on Wednesday

Several low-income families may be without child care after a local Early Head Start program closes this week.

Officials at the University Child Enrichment Center in Cape Girardeau said a loss of funding has forced them to close the Early Head Start program, which targets infants and toddlers from low-income families. The last day will be Wednesday.

In its place, the center is opening up the infant and toddler program to the children and grandchildren of faculty, staff and students at Southeast Missouri State University. The center operates through a partnership with the university and Community Day, a local preschool program.

"I don't know that this is going to be a big change for us, but it's exciting to offer care to a larger population now that income is not a factor," said Amy Blackman, director of the center. "Especially since it's hard to find infant care."

The center is one of six local day-care facilities administering Early Head Start programs through East Missouri Action Agency. In March, the agency board voted to discontinue the programs because of the amount of labor required to operate the programs and the small number of participants.

This year, 58 children and 14 pregnant mothers in Cape Girardeau County were enrolled in the program.

The University Child Enrichment Center provides full-day child care to 74 children up to 5 years old, 16 of whom were in the Early Head Start program. A few of those families plan to stay at the center. The others had to seek child care elsewhere, Blackman said.

The center serves as a lab school for Southeast, a place for college students to learn how to interact with children. It opened in 1998 and moved to its present location at 1912 Broadway in 2003.

The closing of Early Head Start means teacher Kim Rueseler is losing some of her 6-week-old to 12-month-old charges but also that her 8-week-old daughter can now attend the center.

"That was a bummer for everyone else not able to come for free," Rueseler said. "But it was a good thing for me, because otherwise I would have had to take my daughter somewhere else."

cclark@semissourian.com

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