Schreiber Pediatric announces major grant award

Sept. 27, 2016

Schreiber Pediatric Rehab Center, Lancaster County-based provider of pediatric therapy services, will receive a $250,000 matching grant from the Donald B. and Dorothy L. Stabler Foundation to fund an expansion of the center’s child care facilities.

The grant will provide a dollar-for-dollar match for all the money raised by Schreiber Pediatric. Stabler will match up to $250,000, and Schreiber has until June 1 to raise the matching funds. The initial $250,000 grant combined with what Schreiber hopes to raise from the community would mean $500,000 for the organization, by far the largest gift in the 80-year history of the Center.

The money will be used to add an infant room to Schreiber’s Circle of Friends Academy child care. Circle of Friends currently serves children as young as 12 months old. The expansion would provide space for a fully inclusional room, where children with and without special needs will receive care. Serving this group of children is a natural extension of the services Schreiber provides, and there’s a critical shortage of providers offering child care to infants with special needs.

“We are humbled that the Stabler Foundation has stepped forward to help Schreiber provide this vital service to families in central Pennsylvania,” said James DeBord, president of Schreiber Pediatric. “The challenge for us now is to let the community know how important these services are and how much their support is needed to make this dream a reality.”

Schreiber began offering day care services inside the Center in 2009 and currently serves about 50 children a week. The money from the Stabler Foundation and the community would allow children as young as 6 weeks to enroll in Circle of Friends, once the room is fully operational.

“We’ve been hearing from families for several years who want to know if we can take younger children,” said Christina Kalyan, Schreiber’s director of child care services. “The need is out there, especially for infants with special needs. We are excited for them to be able to make this happen.”

The expanded child care services fit well with Schreiber’s existing capabilities. In addition to the core services of occupational, physical and speech therapy, Schreiber also offers infant massage, baby signing and aquatic therapy services on site – all services that no other provider of infant care in the region can offer.

The Stabler Foundation was established by Donald and Dorothy Stabler in 1966 exclusively for charitable, religious, scientific, literary or educational purposes, and one of its focus areas has been to support organizations that serve people who are mentally, physically or developmentally impaired or disabled, according to the foundation’s website.

Schreiber Pediatric is a nationally recognized nonprofit organization that provides physical, occupational and speech-language therapies, as well as educational and recreational programs for thousands of children in Central PA living with congenital and acquired disabilities and developmental delays. Our goal-oriented approach maximizes each child’s ability to function as independently as possible within the community and turn disabilities into abilities. For more information or to donate to the matching grant campaign, please visit www.schreiberpediatric.org.