By Linda Foley
Special to the Reporter
Children’s Institute for Learning Differences (CHILD), a 21-year Mercer Island neighbor, has established a permanent campus to ensure the services provided to vulnerable children throughout the Puget Sound continue.
Operating since 1977, CHILD helps extremely vulnerable children (5-18 years) with a broad range of challenges that interfere with learning — including Autism, Sensory Processing Disorder, ADD/ADHD, mental health, and other neurologically-based conditions — and their families and their teachers.
This has been a momentous year for the school and its founder, Trina Westerlund. The day before CHILD opened its new regional campus located on 2640 Benson Road, South in Renton, founder Trina Westerlund was honored by the community.
In October, Seattle Met Magazine and the Seattle Foundation held their third annual Light a Fire Awards to acknowledge people in the larger Seattle community for their extraordinary and generous acts of service. Westerlund was presented the 2014 Lifetime Achievement award.
CHILD had been delivering services from the former North Mercer Island Junior High School. The school site currently being re-purposed for a new public elementary school.
“Mercer Island has been supportive of CHILD and our mission,” said Westerlund, “and we will be forever grateful.”
We were able to continue serving the same population of children with severe learning challenges in the same place, without interruption for the past two decades, she said.
Westerlund added that since its inception, CHILD staff members have served more than 4,000 students with special needs, including many from Mercer Island.
Today, the school is accredited through the Northwest Accreditation Commission (NWAC/AdvancED) and is certified to provide both therapeutic day school services and in-service training through the Office of the state Superintendent of Public Instruction in Olympia. Currently, 20 school districts from across the Puget Sound area depend on CHILD for specialized therapeutic day-school and pediatric clinical services.
Westerlund’s belief that children deserve help before they fail ignited her passion to begin CHILD and continues to fuel “The CHILD Way.”
The school has received several accolades over the years. It received the KCTS Golden Apple Award; an Excellence in Education Award from the National Board of the Learning Disabilities Association; former Governor Christine Gregoire issued a proclamation for a “CHILD Day” every Oct. 25.
The poignant story of CHILD teachers helping struggling children is told in CHILD’s recently released documentary, “Am I Broken” (www.amibroken.org).
Carrie Fannin, CHILD’s Executive Director said “Securing our permanent home means CHILD’s services will endure.”
Like Westerlund, Fannin readily understands parents’ need for support; her daughter, now a successful college student, is a CHILD alumna.
Responding to current needs, CHILD will expand both its day-school and clinical services, offer early childhood services, and increase training opportunities for families and educators, Fannin said.
“With expanded, technically advanced, and sensory-enhanced space, our ability to share what we have learned with other parents and professionals throughout the Puget Sound will grow exponentially; it’s the way CHILD’s impact will expand from one to many.”
For more, go to www.childnow.org.
