INFANT WELFARE SOCIETY OF CHICAGO 3600 W. Fullerton Avenue, Chicago, IL 60647 773.782.2800 fax 773.782.5042 info@infantwelfare.org
a healthy child
Our patient families face considerable barriers, such as poverty and lack of English proficiency, to developing their children’s reading and school readiness skills.
Literacy Encouragement for Educational Readiness (LEER, or “to read” in Spanish) responds with an array of educational activities.
We distribute age-appropriate gift books (in English, Spanish, or both) to each child from six months to five years at every well-child checkup and immunization visit. At these times, physicians and nurse practitioners also give “prescriptions” for twenty minutes of daily family read-aloud time.
A nurse educator is available to discuss the importance of reading regularly to children and the positive effects of such reading on cognitive development and school readiness.
Last year, volunteers distributed 525 books in our Pediatric waiting area and read to children while their mothers kept clinic appointments or attended our on-site English as a Second Language (ESL) classes, which we offer in partnership with Literacy Chicago. In June of this year, more than 550 IWS patients gathered in the parking lot of the Angel Harvey Infant Welfare Society of Chicago Community Healthy Center for the 2009 Reading Round-up. Through the event, IWS distributed books to patients and entertained them with activities promoting literacy.
“It’s the lives you touch . . . If you just help one child to get the best that he can be and meet his potential then you know you have succeeded.”
Diane Pastorello,
Pediatric Nurse Practitioner
Last year, IWS dstributed 4,000 books to our patients.
LEER
THE IMPORTANCE OF READING