Shannon NickinsonFor many children, Escambia County is a hard place to grow up.
A story in The New York Times, based on data gathered by the Equality of Opportunity Project, highlights the impact that a child’s ZIP code can have on his or her economic prospects. (Read UWF economist Rick Harper’s thoughts on the study here.)
But what if there were a way to make it less so?
Bruce Watson, executive director of the Escambia County Early Learning Coalition, believes he may have one solution to offer.
He convened the third annual Early Education Summit on May 20 to share it. He brought political, business, educational and community leaders together to hear about the concept of a Children’s Service Council.
Bringing the message was Sean Boyle, chairman of the Florida Children’s Council and executive director of the St. Lucie County Children’s Services Council.
Watson said Census data shows there are 18,950 children under the age of 5 in Escambia County. In our county of 310,659 souls, the median income is $43,918.
That means half make more than that much money – and half make less.
“The cut off for my program is $36,375 for a family of four,” Watson said. “There’s not a big difference there, is there?”
Watson’s program, through School Readiness, helps some 3,000 children get access to quality day care and early education. But he has a waiting list of 1,000 children for the program.
“My program deals with early learning, but it doesn’t deal with their nutritional needs, or their health needs, though I can have an impact on their mind being ready to learn,” Watson said. “We can reach those children, stimulate their brains and keep them stimulated. Our community must identify the means to bridge the gaps.”
Boyle’s community built one such bridge in the form of a Children’s Services Council, a special district created in 1990. County ordinance and voter will created the district, which can be funded by up to a half-mill of property tax revenue.
In St. Lucie, the average homeowner pays $25 a year to the council, which manages a dedicated funding stream for programs that demonstrably improve the lives of children.
Boyle’s agency demands accountability from the agencies they fund. They do announced and unannounced site visits. They require audits. They require data on outcomes of the interventions they help fund and they set benchmarks for agencies to continue to receive funding from the council.
“Only successful programs continue to get funded,” Boyle said.
When the council received a request from an after-school program one block away from where they had a successful, established program, they passed on funding the new one, Boyle said.
St. Lucie County is about 40 minutes north of West Palm Beach. Boyle said “the safest city in our community is Port St. Lucie and the most violent city in our community is Fort Pierce. We have 280,000 population, with a 30 percent poverty rate. There are 62,000 children in the county and 68 percent of them are on free and reduced-price lunch.”
Boyle’s council focuses on programs that strengthen families, nurse home visitations, increased local match for early learning and after-school programs. Those, he said, are the needs his community said they wanted to hit hardest.
One way they do that is through a program that sends a registered nurse to visit the homes of new mothers within a week of her being discharged from the hospital. The nurse checks on the health of mother and baby and the father’s stress level.
Often the visit just provides reassurance to new parents. Sometimes, Boyle said, it has saved the lives of mothers and babies.
Within the first three months, parents get another home visit – and a BRAIN bag.
It stands for Building Readiness Among Infants Now. It includes a bag of goodies but most importantly it is conversation with new parents about whether they have the right tools – about the need to have your infant sleep in a safe environment, to check on the mom’s health and the baby’s health, to give parents a developmental milestone guide so they know what to look for in their child’s development, and to leave parents with a copy of the Ages and Stages Questionnaire, a form that medical and child care professionals use to gauge whether a child is developing appropriately from ages 0-5.
The main funding sources for children’s programs in St. Lucie County are United Way and the CSC, Boyle says.
“We’ve created a system of care,” Boyle said. “We brought everyone together so that they wouldn’t compete.”
Boyle said if Escambia leaders choose to try to create a Children’s Services Council, they will have to be sure the business community is on board and that the political will is behind it.
“There is an economic argument to be made for the importance investing in children. The social service community alone will not get you there. The business community is what’s going to help drive this to be successful,” he said.
In his county, the business community “sees the economic impact that it has. They know that it’s their employees going through our programs.”
Boyle stressed it’s not just at-risk people going through these programs.
“These programs are available to everybody. Every child goes through the child care system. Every mother can have the at-home visit,” he said.
Their motto is everybody pays in, so everybody benefits.
Getting the St. Lucie Council renewed by voters, they used data from the programs they funded to show accountability. Getting it started, they focused on demonstrating the need. They started with a business owner, a social service provider, a school board member and a dentist who led the charge.
“They did the dog and pony show, talking to every group, saying our teen birth rate is out of control, our juvenile crime rate is out of control. We can do better and this is one solution,” Boyle said.
Watson said he believes that Escambia could, in about two years’ time, build momentum to create one of these councils to address some of the deficiencies that low wages, poor educational attainment and generational poverty have fed in our community.
His message to those in the room Wednesday was clear.
“You are the apostles,” he said. “Go out and spread the good news.”
Shannon Nickinson is the editor of PensacolaToday.com, a news and commentary website in Pensacola. Follow her on Twitter @snickinson.com.Column courtesy of Context Florida.
