First Steps Inc.

“Form 990 is reviewed by the finance committee. Any questions are discussed with the organization's auditors. The draft of the 990 is then distributed to all board members for their review and questions.”

“The conflict of interest policy is reviewed each year, usually during the first or second board meeting of the year. The review and board acknowledgment is documented in the board minutes.”

“All staff participate in a 90 day review 90 days after being hired. Performance reviews are conducted annually by the employee's immediate supervisor. The executive director's review is conducted by the board president. Monitoring of performance standards is ongoing throughout the fiscal year. Compensation is examined each year by utilizing independent survey data that allows us to examine compensations at similar agencies.”

“Documents are available upon request.”

“First steps provides education and therapeutic services for children with special needs. As a result of participating in our services, children make significant progress toward developmental goals. We create strong partnerships with families that build foundations for their long term success.”

“First accomplishment since 1957, first steps has served children with special needs and medical conditions while supporting their families. We serve families from many different socio-economic backgrounds and ethnicities. Our inclusive mcwhorter family children's center offers full time care and education to children with special needs alongside their typically developing peers ages six weeks to five years. Our staff is highly trained and provides each child the individual attention they need, recognizing that each child has a distinct set of strengths and challenges. Our staff reports daily to parents and caregivers via teaching strategies gold on their child's progress, while providing tools to continue to work on skills in their home environment. First steps provides our children with a curriculum rich in literacy and developmental skills that provide a strong foundation for achievement later in life. The first steps community outreach program consists of skilled developmental therapists that travel to a child's home, childcare center or other natural setting to spend time each week in play based interventions geared towards the child's goals. Working with parents and other caregivers in these natural settings and coaching them to utilize these techniques is an important part of this program. The ayundando ninos (helping children) program is a part of the community outreach program that works with children from latino families as well as other cultures, offering interpreters to assist in communicating with caregivers. We pride ourselves in offering the very best training to our staff to ensure that we are abreast of new techniques and evaluation tools to ensure each child receives the very best. Our therapy program offers occupational, speech/language, physical, and feeding therapies to children up to age 12 in our mcwhorter family children's center. Over the past year, more than 7,400 therapy sessions were provided.”