Child care and respite care for children with disabilities and special needs in Colorado Springs

Children with Special Needs | Strong, healthy families are at the core of our goals and values. Zach’s Place at the Laurie Hillyard Family Center is one of only two licensed child care facilities in the state of Colorado that offers specialized child and respite care for youth with disabilities ages 2.5 – 18. We provide a break and support that parents need, while giving the child a chance for fun and challenging activities in a learning environment.

At Zach’s Place, we encourage creativity and create art, write stories and participate in musical activities. Zach’s offers active, structured and free play while teaching life skills and socialization skills. Operating on a sliding fee scale, no one is ever turned away because of an inability to pay. We offer flexible scheduling and individualized support and our goal is to serve as many families as possible.

Zach’s Place opened its doors in 1998 to provide families in the Colorado Springs area a safe place for parents to entrust their child(ren) with disabilities and their siblings in the care of trained staff without regard to race, religion, or ethnicity.

In November 2015, we officially named the facility Zach’s Place at The Laurie Hillyard Family Center. The facilities’ new name is in honor of Laurie Hillyard, a woman with a disability who is loved and cherished by her family, the descendants of the Helen K. and Arthur E. Johnson Foundation founders. Click here to read about Laurie’s story.

At Zach’s Place program, we seek to strengthen families by providing quality respite care in a nurturing environment, whether for a day, overnight, or weekend. We also help children achieve their greatest level of independence through life skills training.

Goals at Zach’s Place

One of our most important goals at Zach’s Place at The Laurie Hillyard Family Center is working on life skills. This is very important to our families we serve because it helps the youth to be a more active member of their family and their community. We work on routine activities like preparing meals, visiting local stores and restaurants and how to be safe at home and in the community. We believe that taking care of our body is important too, so we encourage children to keep themselves clean and participate in exercise. We go swimming at the YMCA and we take hikes at local parks like the Garden of the Gods. We also like to have fun and our favorite places to visit are the North Pole Amusement Park and the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo.

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Zach’s Place at The Laurie Hillyard Family Center was voted 2015 BEST Childcare Center by The Colorado Springs Independent. Thanks everyone who voted for us!