Because Daystar babies are born with multi-system complex impairments, they cannot attend traditional daycare centers. As a result, too many parents are faced with the impossible choice of earning income or caring for their medically fragile child. Furthermore, Daystar parents can be overwhelmed by the isolation and emotional rigors of daily care for their medically fragile infants. Families are often unprepared to face the challenges of caring for an infant with complex medical needs and require many support systems to help them navigate their way in managing their family health care burden. Taking part in a community of parents who are all facing the same challenges helps to reinforce their ability to cope and creatively approach obstacles they encounter. Our observations and experience, in addition to published national research on children with special health care needs and their families, have provided us with the opportunity to objectively problem solve the numerous challenges and complexities these families face in their daily lives.
At Daystar, our efforts are guided by two overarching goals:
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to provide medically-competent and socially-stimulating care to infants with medical and developmental complexities in a caring, nursing-supervised home environment; and
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to ensure the health of the Daystar family by providing emotional support and advocacy.
Today, Daystar is a lifeline for area parents. By blending skilled nursing care with loving, family-centered support, Daystar’s program gives medically fragile babies the opportunity to experience a place where they can be babies first; a place to heal and a place to grow to their fullest potential. Indeed, Daystar’s purpose centers on promoting the daily growth and development of our community’s medically challenged infants during their first years of life. However, it is our fundamental belief that we may also effectively influence the long term impact on the health and quality of life of these infants by providing individualized family case management and family support services. Each family’s requirements for support are unique and can be defined by the specific individual characteristics of the child, such as the degree of habilitation and health care needed, the structural characteristics of the family (single parent household, availability of family members), a parent’s ability to cope with the stress and worry in caring for a child with special health care needs, and external characteristics, such as the family’s financial status and work schedules.
The intricate medical needs of our Daystar babies, combined with our best practice model of care, requires a 1:5 nurse-to-child ratio and 1:2 childcare provider-to-child ratio, resulting in direct care costs of $176 per day/baby. Daystar customizes a tuition rate for each family based on their unique circumstances and financial situtation. Daystar's rates are comparable to those rates charged at a traditional daycare center. Through donations and fundraising, Daystar is able to offer partial scholarships to families in need, and has awarded more than $60,000 in scholarships since 2002.
Daystar’s pioneering work was recently recognized as essential to this population with approval to become a Medicaid provider through the NYS Office of Persons With Developmental Disabilities, beginning January 1, 2009, providing long-term sustainability to the Daystar program.