Dedicated to Florida Families In 1995, upon the birth of their first child, Vanessa and Lance were faced with their first family dilemma—childcare.  Several weeks of searching for a childcare facility or family daycare home that maintained a clean and stimulating learning environment at an affordable cost yielded no results.   Existing family childcare homes essentially offered places to corral children in front of a television for a day of inactivity, while childcare centers generally provided no structure, an unclean environment and little creative or other mental stimulation.   Unable to find a childcare provider that met her high quality standards, Vanessa left her career in healthcare and started Leaps and Bounds Learning Centers.  Initially a home-based program, the Sacramento, California locations quickly filled to capacity by providing local families a much-needed alternative to “stranger-care” and “childcare mills.”  Vanessa found that a focus on caring for the children of low-income families and single-parent households also provided significant non-financial rewards. In 2004, after visiting family in Central Florida, Vanessa and Lance decided to sell the Sacramento locations and relocate from the "hustle and bustle" of California to the "family paradise" of Orlando, where they continue the Leaps and Bounds Learning Centers mission today.