University Settlement's most recent significant innovative investment has brought together two important characteristics of our organization:  first, our expertise in the field of early child care and education, and second, our administrative and managerial strength.

The Settlement recently became the new sponsor of a large child care agency in East New York, which had previously been under the sponsorship of an organization that is now closing its doors.  Unfortunately, this Center had been allowed to deteriorate on almost all dimensions by which one measures quality operations.  For a neighborhood that needs and deserves quality programs, this was a sad and unnecessary situation. Fortunately, the NYC Administration for Children's Services has recognized this as a high priority community, and decided to save the program and the full capacity (170 children) by reassigning the contract to University Settlement.

In just a month, US was able to obtain a new license from the Department of Health, substantially improve the staff (almost half are new with a full contingent of licensed teachers), make improvements in the facility including classrooms to make it more appealing to children and parents, reorganize the fiscal and human resources functions, upgrade the IT infrastructure and initiate better outreach to parents and the community. This major turn-around operation has been due entirely to the incredible efforts of our program staff, especially Nina Piros, Director of Child Care programs and Tonia Cristofaro, Director Early Childhood Programs Evaluation, and the directors of our administrative departments who descended on the site and insisted on an immediate transformation.  

It has been our position that when critically-needed programs have deteriorated for one reason or another, dramatic intervention rather than incremental technical assistance must be considered as a legitimate if not essential strategy. This will be a case study for that argument. While we expect that some time will be needed to make all the qualitative improvements necessary, e.g. training the new and old staff in a new curriculum, the path is clear. A year from now, Children's Corner will be one of the best programs in Brooklyn, and another example of why University Settlement's willingness to take risks is an integral factor in innovation.