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Chandler Care Center details medical, dental and family supports, eligibility and funding sources
Summary
The Chandler Care Center presented an overview of its services to the CUSD board, reporting clinic appointments, family resource visits, food and diaper distributions, funding sources and eligibility rules for services.
Katie Kale, director of the Chandler Care Center, told the governing board that the Care Center operates as a nonprofit program serving Chandler Unified School District students and Chandler residents with no-cost medical, dental and family-resource services.
Kale said the Care Center began as a family resource initiative in 1995, expanded into a freestanding clinic in 2010 and received 501(c)(3) status in 2017. She described the center’s mission to improve health and education outcomes by keeping children healthy and in school.
The center reported a diverse funding mix and year-round services. Kale said about 19% of the center’s income comes from CUSD (including in-kind building, IT and utilities support and partial staff funding), volunteers’ donated professional time is valued and counted as in-kind support, and First Things First contributed approximately 17% through an intergovernmental agreement that supports the family resource center. She said the center’s income also comes from corporate, foundation, city, and individual donations and qualified charitable tax-credit donations.
Kale provided an impact snapshot for the last fiscal year: roughly 3,000 medical and dental appointments, about 1,500 family resource center contacts and more than 4,000 people served through the food and diaper programs. The center runs programs Monday–Friday and at least one Saturday per month, has seven in-house staff plus seven partner organizations on-site and uses more than 300 volunteers annually.
Kale said the medical and dental clinics provide preventive and restorative dental care, pediatric primary care, hearing and vision screening, immunizations and assistance applying for Arizona’s Medicaid program (ACCESS). Eligibility for the clinic-based medical and dental services is limited to children who live in the City of Chandler or attend CUSD schools; the family resource center programs are open to families in the Chandler area from pregnancy through preschool age.
Kale and district staff described recent examples of the center coordinating with partners and funders to provide restorative dental care at no cost to families and running holiday assistance, Thanksgiving food distributions and a November/December toy drive that registered more than 1,300 children in 2024. Board members asked about the dollar value of the district’s in-kind support and district staff said they would provide precise figures on request.
