Why Beth is a big deal: Beth Houghton has officially begun her tenure as the new CEO of the Juvenile Welfare Board of Pinellas County. She previously was executive director and then CEO of the St. Petersburg Free Clinic for eight years. There she helped the organization expand to eight food, shelter and health care programs, all which helped thousands of people over the years and guided 400 people toward independent living through shelter services. She also spent 12 years as CFO and general counsel for Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg. In her new role with the JWB, Beth will oversee an annual program and general government budget of $79.3 million and a workforce of 62. She is also tasked with creating strategic partnerships and overseeing programs that benefit Pinellas County children and families. Last year, the JWB invested in 49 nonprofit agencies that delivered 88 programs focused on school readiness, school success, prevention of child abuse and neglect, and strengthening community, according to the organization. 

How do you see the JWB working with local businesses? What are some of the best ways to come together? It’s probably more with our partners, but there are some ways to work directly for sure. For instance things that connect with our efforts are things like the Lunch Pals program that comes out mostly from the education foundation, either the school or some combo, but is very corporate-supported and encouraged. Those are great ways for kids to have another adult who cares about them and who can just listen to them and affirm them as people. On the other side of it, it gives those adults who might be otherwise kind of sheltered economically an insight into what it means to be a kid in a disadvantaged circumstance. And I see that a lot — we all see what’s around us and what we know and it’s hopeful to appreciate that a good 40 percent of our kids are in families that are financially on the edge. Others may not see that. 

What interested you in taking on this role? I was actually recruited. I was a pretty happy camper where I was but you’d have to ask other people as to why. But children have always been sort of the heart of my heart. That’s easy for people to say but it’s been truth for me. Having spent 12 years at [Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital], that spoke to me a great deal, and having children in my own life. Of all of the populations of folks who are disadvantaged and struggle — and there are many — children have always been at the top of the list for me. It’s a continuation of the purpose and the mission to focus strictly on children. The possibility of such great impact and the history of great impact for 75 years and the potential for continued impact because of the funds available, that all just made it very exciting to do. 

What was it like leaving the clinic? It was sad because I’d put a lot of myself into it and loved the people, the mission, donors and board members. So I won’t say there wasn’t sadness along with it, but I also felt very good that it’s in good hands from the board level to the management level on down. They’ve had 50 years of operations and only seven of those were with me; they’ll do fine. 

What are some of your goals with the Juvenile Welfare Board? This year it really is to listen because we’re in the third year of a three-year strategic plan. The four major areas of emphasis for that strategic plan are school readiness, school success, strengthening communities and prevention of child abuse and neglect. Then there are other initiatives that we are a part of that are either smaller that we can do given the resources we have or that we’re the backbone for community-wide — work like childhood hunger. We’re the one that can bring together everybody from the school system to nonprofits and others to work together and have a greater impact. Those are the emphases right now, and it’s not to say it’s going to be a whole new deal, but it will be a year of gathering new data, from demographics to where kids are who are most at-risk, how many and where, what the gaps are, new data on where we stand within the nation on various indicators of child welfare and then stepping back with the board and looking at where and how we ought to allocate our funds going forward. There will be a million other things going on and things as they arise, but that’s really top of my list is to work through that process so that we do the best job we can do for kids and we align that with the community.

Up Close

Name, title: Beth Houghton, CEO of the Juvenile Welfare Board

Education: Bachelor’s from Newcomb College of Tulane University in political science and economics; MBA from Tulane University College of Business and JD from Stetson College of Law

Downtime: Reading, travel and family

Favorite book: Anything by Richard Rohr or Marcus Borg, historical fiction or anything by Michal Lewis (most recently “The Undoing Project”), and Malcolm Gladwell (most recently “Talking to Strangers”)

Favorite movie: “Magnificent Obsession”

Family life: Married to Scott Wagman for 41 years; three grown children; raising two of three grandsons – 6 and 7 years old. “So our lives include reading and saying prayers each night, homework, swimming, parks, etc.”

Music: “The music of my teen years — Carole King, James Taylor, Harry Chapin, Chicago”

To view article by Tampa Bay Business Journal visit: https://www.bizjournals.com/tampabay/news/2019/11/08/beth-houghton-takes-the-reins-at-the-juvenile.html 

Pinellas County’s children are “really struggling.”

That was the message conveyed by Juvenile Welfare Board’s Chief Administrative Officer Lynda Leedy during a recent Board of County Commissioners meeting.

Leedy told commissioners about the need for more mental health care for children. According to a 2017 study, 25% of children have considered suicide and about 20% have a plan to do it, she said. Suicide is the No. 2 cause of death for youth in America. The number of children ages 14-17 who have tried to kill themselves has tripled in the years 2007-2017.

The increase in suicide among children is one of the reasons the Juvenile Welfare Board has been working on a Children’s Mental Health Initiative designed to enhance public awareness about the problem. Those involved have a mission to provide an “accessible, family-oriented, coordinated, comprehensive, high quality system, which is supported by an engaged and skilled workforce.”

Leedy said more professionals are needed to provide mental health care to children. Barriers to access to care need to be eliminated. Children need to be treated as early as possible, she said.

Forty community leaders have been meeting since May 2018, looking for ways to improve care. Five teams took on different needs. One focused on access to care. Another looked at ways to increase the workforce of mental health care providers for children.

A third group tackled public awareness and family involvement. The fourth was assigned the task of measuring outcomes of care programs, and the fifth took on finding ways to finance a system of care.

One of the solutions the initiative is trying involves a partnership with Community Health Center of Pinellas. Five locations that offer pediatric services are now providing age-appropriate universal screenings during regular doctor’s visits. Children with more complex needs will be referred to a mental health provider.

JWB is providing resources, such as training and education for staff. JWB also is working with the county’s schools to involve them in the program.

A multidisciplinary team will meet weekly and review patient cases to identify opportunities to improve or change the program.

In other business from Oct. 22, the commission:

• Approved submitting an application for a Florida Job Growth Grant to fund taxiway improvements at the St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport.
• Approved a proposal for a Florida Job Growth Grant to fund a portion of the cost to design, construct and equip the Tampa Bay Innovation Center incubator in St. Petersburg.
• Approved a resolution in support of Formulated Solutions LLC becoming a qualified applicant for an economic development ad valorem tax exemption. The company plans to expand its current site and add 75 new jobs. The exemption would apply to the expansion.
• Approved a $1 million grant agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice for an Opioid Affected Youth Initiative in partnership with the Sixth Judicial Circuit Court. The grant would be paid over a three-year period and serve at least 75 children.
• Awarded a contract to Denson Construction Inc. for $484,717 for the Philippe Park pedestrian bridge replacement project and approved an amendment to the interlocal agreement with the city of Safety Harbor, which is a project partner.
• Approved a resolution authorizing submittal of a Public Library Construction Grant application to the Florida Department of State, Division of Library and Information Services for the East Lake Community Library renovation project. If the library receives the $170,000 requested, the money would be used for minor interior renovations, new furnishings, lighting, equipment and technology. The full cost of the project is $340,000. The library would provide the matching $170,000 from its capital projects reserve fund.
• Approved a resolution authorizing the lease of property between the county and the towns of North Redington Beach and Redington Shores, as well as interlocal agreements and ground lease agreements for a multi-tenant, joint-use facility.
• Approved a $300,000 Environmental Protection Brownfield Assessment Grant agreement for the Lealman Community Redevelopment Area.
• Approved an ordinance on second reading amending the Future Land Use and Quality Communities Element and the Housing Element of the Comprehensive Plan to delete policies that limit affordable housing densities in certain commercial and mixed-use Future Land Use Map categories.
• Approved a request for a land use change from residential urban to residential medium on 1.79 acres at 11290 Walsingham Road in unincorporated Seminole. The amendment would allow Sweet Water at Largo to increase the number of beds at its assisted living facility by 26.

Sitting as the Emergency Medical Services Board, commissioners:

• Approved the advanced life support first responder agreements with the cities of St. Petersburg and St. Pete Beach. The five-year term begins Oct. 1, 2019 and ends on Sept. 30, 2024. It has an option for one additional five-year extension. The agreement includes an opt-in for the priority dispatch system, which has been implemented in Clearwater, Largo, Lealman, Safety Harbor and Seminole.

Sitting as the Countywide Planning Authority, commissioners:

• Approved an ordinance amending the Countywide Rules and Countywide Plan Strategies during a second public hearing. The ordinance allows replacement of the transit-oriented land use vision map with a land-use strategy map and reclassifies special centers and special corridors. It also allows modifying standards, requirements and amendment process for activity center and multimodal corridor categories. It allows creation of a planned redevelopment district category and provides for new density and intensity bonuses.

To view article by Tampa Bay Newspapers visit: https://www.tbnweekly.com/pinellas_county/article_1a59088e-ffec-11e9-9e7d-079554bcb482.html  

Time ran out for the residents of the Southern Comfort mobile home park this week.

What was once a tidy neighborhood of about 500 people off U.S. 19 was practically a ghost town by Halloween. A judge had ordered it closed by Thursday, after the owner’s decade-long failure to fix a sewage system that leaked bacteria into the ground and raised questions about the park’s drinking water.

Most families moved out before the deadline. Their houses sat vacant and boarded up, windows smashed in. Stray cats roamed the empty streets like they owned the place. And the last stragglers feared they wouldn’t make it out in time.

Inside those pockets of panic, scattered around the park, the last residents spent this week scrambling to avoid being left homeless.

“We are just in freak-out mode,” said Kreshae Humphrey a 26-year-old mother of three who spent Wednesday worrying about where her family would go.

“It’s kind of just hitting me,” said her partner, Eric Soto De Jesus, 26. “We are putting all our furniture out on the street.”

• • •

Once, children had played in the park’s streets and neighbors threw Christmas block parties. Now it looked like the set of a dystopian movie, one where all the inhabitants suddenly disappeared while moving out.

The demolitions have already begun. Caution tape surrounded a flattened house, where lizards crawled through a pile of wood chips and insulation.

Nevaeh Soto De Jesus, 3, the oldest of Kreshae Humphrey and Eric Soto De Jesus’ three daughters, helps family move on Thursday, the day they had to abandon their home at the Southern Comfort mobile home park in Clearwater. [MARTHA ASENCIO-RHINE | Times]

Brown couches and black trash bags lay Wednesday by the hibiscus bush outside the home that Humphrey and Soto De Jesus had spent three years fixing up.

Inside, they were sweeping their belongings into piles and deciding what to keep and what to toss. They were preparing for the worst case scenario — moving their three young daughters into a homeless shelter, which would mean giving up most of their possessions.

“Oh, we gotta keep the mermaid,” Soto De Jesus said, holding up a glittery blanket shaped like a mermaid’s tail.

“No, we gotta throw it out,” Humphrey said, shaking her head briskly. She saw a quarter on the floor and picked it up. “Gotta keep that for the savings jar,” she said. Three-year-old Nevaeh fished the mermaid tail out of a trash pile and hugged it to her chest.

Despite their ordeal, they were relieved to leave behind the park’s drinking water, which they believe was contaminated and ravaged the skin of their two oldest daughters. They are one of two families who have sued Southern Comfort’s owner in Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court. The owner has denied the allegations.

Darla Fullmer, 76, overwhelmed by having to sift through her belongings, became upset and cried on Thursday, the day she had to abandon her home of 20 years at the Southern Comfort mobile home park in Clearwater. [MARTHA ASENCIO-RHINE | Times]

Up the hill, Darla Fullmer was also struggling. The 76-year-old had lived in her white, green-trimmed mobile home for 20 years and filled it with her collection of porcelain dolls and craft projects. She didn’t know quite how to say goodbye to her life there.

The judge and owner agreed to close the park in October 2018. But residents like Fullmer didn’t find out until April, when social services agencies met with families and told them where to look for help. Fullmer said when she called the list of numbers they gave her, she always got the same answer: No vacancy.

She wasn’t sure what to do. She lived off her social security checks and had no family. She didn’t want to abandon her two cats, Lucky and Blue Eyes.

Social service agencies returned to check on her earlier this month and realized her plight. “They told me I kind of fell through the cracks,” Fullmer said, tugging on the sides of her T-shirt and trying to keep the tears back.

Representatives for the county and social service agencies canvassed the neighborhood all week, knocking on doors and checking in with the last inhabitants to make sure they had a plan.

“Everyone has been accounted for that we know of,” said Pinellas County Director of Human Services Daisy Rodriguez on Wednesday.

• • •

Humphrey spent months searching for a new place to live. Last week, she thought she had finally found the solution to her family’s housing woes: A sky-blue house with three bedrooms, a white picket fence, and a big backyard in Tarpon Springs, across the street from a public library. The owner accepted Section 8 vouchers and on Oct. 23, the house passed inspection. The family had a week to move-in.

Then bureaucracy jeopardized everything. The landlord required $1,500 for security deposit and first month’s rent, but Humphrey wasn’t sure they could scrape the funds together. Money was tighter than ever. Soto de Jesus lost his job soon after they learned the park was closing. He has only found part-time work — and they still had paid the usual $658 in rent for their lot in October.

Humphrey was connected with the Family Services Initiative, a service funded by the Pinellas County Juvenile Welfare Board to provide emergency assistance for families. As soon as the house was inspected and approved for Section 8, a caseworker came over to gather the documents required to release the deposit money.

But the caseworker told them the agency only cuts checks on certain days of the week. Humphrey’s family would have to wait until Friday. But Southern Comfort was supposed to be closed on Thursday. Where would they go? What if there were more delays or something else went wrong? They might lose the Tarpon Springs house altogether.

To keep herself motivated, Humphrey scribbled to-do lists and math equations in dry-erase marker on her fridge. There had to be a way to make the patchwork of social service assistance add up to a future. She called family members, contemplated spending the interim in a homeless shelter and even launched a GoFundMe page to help with the deposit. It only raised $150.

The uncertainty left the family preparing for the worst. They dumped their furniture outside and swept up the girls’ toys — little teddy bears, a purple My Little Pony, and pink sparkly fairy wings — into trash bags.

A Tampa Bay Times reporter called the Juvenile Welfare Board on Wednesday to ask about Humphrey’s case. Chief Operation Officer Judith Warren said the agency could not say whether it was working with the family due to confidentiality rules. But she did discuss the program in general.

“There’s a lot of complexity in the approval process because we are a government entity,” she said. “We have to verify income, we have to verify jobs, so that we are accountable to the public.”

• • •

At Fullmer’s house, four social services workers from various agencies hovered around her, helping her pack up for the movers. They put green check marks on furniture she was taking with her, and red X’s on the things to leave behind. Her new apartment will be a lot smaller than her two-bedroom mobile home.

The agencies had been meeting every day since last Friday to coordinate help, Rodriguez said. They got Fullmer’s Section 8 funds expedited, then found an apartment complex that accepted her.

It wouldn’t be available for another week, though, so they arranged for her to stay in a hotel and put her belongings in storage. The Humane Society of Pinellas will keep her cats until she gets settled into her new home.

”They reassured me that, since I don’t have a place to go, they are going to take care of them,” Fullmer said.

By Thursday morning, Humphrey and Soto De Jesus were in high spirits.

The night before, they received an unexpected call from the Juvenile Welfare Board. They learned that their deposit would be expedited and sent to the landlord that next day. They could start moving their things into the sky-blue house in Tarpon Springs.

Kreshae Humphrey and Eric Soto De Jesus load a crib into a pickup truck they borrowed to move their family on Thursday. That was the day they had to abandon their home at the Southern Comfort mobile home park. [MARTHA ASENCIO-RHINE | Times]

Humphrey figured the couch that spent the night on the curb wasn’t worth salvaging. But she was relieved to keep the cherry-oak crib that had been in a family hand-me down that all her babies had slept in.

“It’s crazy how everything came together today,” she said. “We got a house, I can’t ask for more.”

That evening, on Humphrey’s 27th birthday, the landlord gave them the keys. Maybe, she thought, they could celebrate with her favorite meal, crabs from Pompey Seafood Market, and a trip to a free haunted house.

But after all the trips back-and-forth to move their belongings from the park, she and Soto De Jesus were exhausted. They would have to wait a day for electricity and internet. For now, they were home.

To view article by Tampa Bay Times visit: https://www.tampabay.com/news/pinellas/2019/11/01/a-mad-scramble-to-find-new-homes-as-clearwater-mobile-home-park-closes/ 

A new draft report lays out a dozen recommendations for creating a tax-funded Children’s Services Council in Leon County pending voter approval in November 2020. 

Since September 2018, the Leon County CSC Planning Committee has met monthly and pored over reams of research and heard numerous presentations leading up its 25-page report, serving as a blueprint for potential priorities, governance and funding.

The 21-member Planning Committee landed on three general priority areas: success in school and life; healthy children and families; and stable and nurturing families and communities. The report also includes a breakdown of how Leon County compares to Florida based on selected indicators of community health.  

In Leon County, more children are arrested in and out of school, are prone to hunger and twice as likely to be treated for a bacterial-based sexually transmitted disease, according to the report. 

The committee’s report shows no leanings on whether a CSC should be created, said Second Judicial Circuit Chief Judge Jonathan Sjostrom, who oversees juvenile dependency cases and chairs the committee. 

“It looks to me like a pretty accurate summary of the work the committee has done and the work that the committee has received,” Sjostrom said. “The facts are pretty straight forward, and the community has to decide. (The report) is really an effort to be fair and objective.”

The Planning Committee’s next meeting will be the public’s last opportunity to offer input before recommendations are finalized and presented to the County Commission. The committee meets at 9 a.m. Nov. 8 at the Tallahassee Community College Ghazvini Center for Healthcare Education, 1528 Surgeons Drive. The committee will sunset on Dec. 31.  

If created in Leon County, a council would decide its focus areas based on broad-brush guidelines spelled out in the statute. It could impose a property tax rate of up to half a mill or $42 per $100,000 in taxable property value per year — representing up to $8 million per year.

Supporters say a dedicated funding stream to address mounting children’s issues is long overdue while critics are dubious a CSC will make a difference. Others see a CSC launch as wasteful government spending. 

A Children’s Services Council in Leon County — a notion that failed to pass in a 1990 special election — was resurrected in March 2018 by then-County Commissioner John Dailey, now serving as Tallahassee’s mayor. 

From the private to nonprofit sectors, the idea of a local council split the community and many pushed for a 2018 ballot initiative, a move some viewed as hasty and misguided. County commissioners decided to allow a 2020 ballot initiative and the creation of an advisory Planning Committee. 

Nine Children’s Services Council exist statewide.

Launched in 1945, the Juvenile Welfare Board of Pinellas County is the oldest and The Children’s Trust of Alachua launched in November 2018, making it the newest. The Florida Children’s Council reports an average annual cost to taxpayers of $25 to $80, depending on the county.

To view article by Tallahassee Democrat visit: https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/money/2019/11/01/committee-releases-report-propsed-local-childrens-services-council/4109057002/