We’re seeing an increase in infant deaths from unsafe sleeping in Tampa Bay. We’re getting some helpful tips to ensure your kids are safe while sleeping.

Dr. Kelly Devers, Hillsborough County Medical Examiner, and Dr. Ashley McPhie, Chief Medical Officer, Tampa Family Health join us to share helpful tips to ensure your child is safe while sleeping.

In 2021, there were 11 child deaths due to infant unsafe sleep – which is an increase from last year, according to the Hillsborough County Medical Examiner,

In the last 8 years, 190 infants have died from unsafe sleep across Tampa Bay.

Dr. Devers tells us these are 100% preventable deaths. She says she’s seeing cases where babies are dying because their cribs are full of stuff, or they get wedged between the couch. Infants lack the muscle control needed to move their necks if something is blocking their airways.

Dr. Ashely McPhie says Black infants are two times more likely to die from sleep-related causes.

They also strongly recommend infants do not sleep with pillow-top mattresses, comforters, fluffy pillows, and stuffed animals. These pose a danger to infants in cribs as well as adult beds.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, infants 6 months and younger should practice the ABCs of safe sleep. The safest way for infants to sleep is alone on their backs in a crib. This minimizes the risk of the infant suffocating, especially if they have not developed neck muscle control. Babies should be put to sleep on their backs in a crib with a tight-fitting crib sheet and firm mattress.

For more information, head to PreventNeedlessDeaths.com.

Read the entire article and watch the video at https://www.abcactionnews.com/morning-blend/infant-sleeping-related-deaths-up-in-tampa-bay-tips-to-keep-your-kids-safe

The mission of the School-Based Health Services Program is to assess, protect and promote the health of children and adolescents, helping to assure that they are healthy in the classroom and ready to learn. To assess, preserve, and promote the health of children and adolescents, helping to ensure that they are healthy in the classroom and prepared to learn.

Prevention, intervention and emergency school-based health services are provided every day to adolescents attending five Pinellas County schools:

• Boca Ciega High School
• Gibbs High School
• Northeast High School
• Pinellas Park High School
• Largo High School

The high schools selected are based on several factors:

1. A high percentage of free or reduced lunches
2. High numbers of youth with significant discipline issues and histories of risky behaviors
3. High incidences of chronic health problems

School-Based Health Services staff deliver effective, efficient and quality healthcare on-site and provide the infrastructure necessary for treating:

• Obesity and other chronic diseases
• Provide care for acute illnesses
• Work towards alleviating co-morbidities among at-risk high school students
• Deliver culturally competent primary preventive, and emergency health care
• Improves the overall health status in a substantially uninsured and medically underserved population through shared school-based and community resources
• Provide a focus on prevention and early intervention
• Offers a combination of testing such as pregnancy or STD testing
• Medical assessments
• Physical examinations
• Substance abuse counseling
• Case management
• Dental health education
• Diabetes education
• Nutrition education
• Health education and health promotion

The School-Based Health Services Program is a partnership between the Florida Department of Health in Pinellas County, Pinellas County School System, and the Juvenile Welfare Board.

Visit bit.ly/schoolbasedhealthservices for specific forms to fill out.

Read the article on the Weekly Challenger: https://theweeklychallenger.com/school-based-health-services/

R’Club Child Care will expand its program at the Lemon Street Early Learning Academy to include children ages 2 months to 3 years old, starting Aug. 10.

Enrollment began July 26.

The academy is located at 1019 E Lemon St.

For information, call 727-938-1611 or email vbotts@rclub.net.

Funding for the program was provided by the Juvenile Welfare Board of Pinellas County.

One of the biggest concerns coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic was the impact on our children’s education. Last year, we found that Tampa Bay area students were struggling with learning loss, and this year, we’re finding the rebound is slow.

The Juvenile Welfare Board of Pinellas County (JWB) is particularly concerned about grade-level reading loss during the pandemic. That’s why the organization spent a few weeks in July driving around the Pinellas County Schools Book Bus giving out about 10,000 free books to children in the community.

“As part of our Grade Level Reading campaign for Pinellas County, Early Readers, Future Leaders, we put together a number of things to get out in the summer about the importance of reading. And we do things year-round to try to help our kids all strive to read at grade level by third grade,” explained Danielle Hintz with JWB.

Florida Standard Assessments (FSA) latest results from 2022 show those reading at grade level or above by third grade across the state has dropped 5% since 2019. It’s now at 53%.

Breaking that down in the Tampa Bay area shows learning loss in every third-grade English Language Arts (ELA) in each county:

• Pasco County 2019: 60%, 2022: 53%
• Pinellas County 2019: 56%, 2022: 52%
• Polk County 2019: 52%, 2022: 48%
• Hillsborough County 2019: 52%, 2022: 49%
• Hernando County 2019: 57%, 2022: 54%

Learning loss is not just affecting reading. Last summer when we pulled grades, we found that math was a particular problem.

We asked for fourth quarter grades again for this last school year, and while many districts are still working to provide data, Hillsborough Public School’s numbers show the bigger picture with a slight rebound from last year, but many students still struggling.

• Looking at high school students, failing grades in math are still up 4% from pre-pandemic numbers
• 10th grade, said to be one of the most important years for a college transcript, shows the biggest slide in math with 6% more F’’s than before the pandemic
• Grades 8-11 each saw a 3% increase of F’s in ELA from pre-pandemic

Middle school students in Pinellas County Schools (PCS) are still receiving slightly more F’s in math and ELA than pre-pandemic, but the rebound from pandemic years is significant.

This is especially true for PCS high school math. Last year, 30% of high school students received F’s, this year, it’s down to 20% — very similar to 2019.

Hillsborough County Public School’s Superintendent Addison Davis addressed the learning loss in a press conference Monday regarding more than two dozen schools receiving higher grade assessments overall from the state’s FSA testing.

“Are we out of the weeds related to what the pandemic has impacted us academically? The answer to that is absolutely not. If you look at it, we still have a ways to go to catch up where we were prior to the pandemic,” Davis said.

He added that active solutions include:

• Systematic phonics
• New ELA and math initiatives rolling out next year
• Tier curriculum to address student needs

“The kids that struggle the most are, again, the kids that are going to continue to have that challenge and that’s why it’s so important to have summer programming,” Hintz advised.

Thursday is the last day of book bus stops with JWB. They are running two buses and any child or teen in the community is welcome to show up and pick out two books.

The stops are about an hour or less each and include:

• B&GC Pinellas Park 9 a.m.
• Forbes Recreation Center in Pinellas Park 10 a.m.
• Magnolia Day school in St. Petersburg 10 a.m.
• YMCA Suncoast in Palm Harbor 11:45 a.m.
• Tarpon Springs in Public Library 12:30 p.m.
• YMCA in Palm Harbor 12:45 p.m.

Outside of the Book Bus, ReadStrong Pinellas is a free resource for books in Pinellas County.

In addition, children in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties can access free books online at Renaissance myON.

Local libraries everywhere are also hosting summer reading programs.

Scholastic offers free online reading and activities until Sept. 3.

To find more online resources for free books and reading activities for children anywhere, click here.

Watch the news broadcast and read the article on ABCActionNews.com: https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/in-depth/pandemic-learning-loss-slowly-rebounding-from-the-20-21-school-year-but-children-still-struggle

The Grace House, an 80-bed shelter for homeless families, will transform into an affordable housing community in the fall.

Hope Villages Of America has operated the shelter for three decades, but families will have to move out in September. CEO Kirk Ray Smith said it’s necessary because the Juvenile Welfare Board of Pinellas County deciding to cut their $400,000 in taxpayer support.

“It’s very sad and it hurts to do that. This is an agonizing process, but what do you do? You can’t operate in the red,” Smith said.

8 On Your Side asked the Juvenile Welfare Board about the decision to stop funding Grace House. CEO Beth Houghton says the board was concerned with how the operation was being managed.

“We investigated and interviewed at least four individuals there at Grace House, both employees as well as folks who lived there, and the kinds of comments we got back were really disturbing,” she said.

Grace House stopped accepting new families in July. After the current occupants move out in September, they will conduct minor renovations ahead of launching the affordable housing units in October.

Read the article at https://www.wfla.com/news/pinellas-county/pinellas-county-shelter-for-homeless-families-closing-in-the-fall/

Pinellas County is losing one of its biggest homeless shelters and one of the few that offers family units.

Hope Villages of America announced it would transition its property known as Grace House from a homeless shelter to affordable housing units starting Oct. 1. At a news conference Wednesday, leaders of the organization were quick to point out that the transition is bittersweet.

“The number one way to resolve homelessness is affordable housing, making it affordable for people to stay in their homes,” said Jonita Lewis, the Executive Vice President with Hope Villages. “We’re also saddened by the reality that we’ll have to eliminate 80 beds for families facing homelessness.”

During the 40-minute news conference, President and CEO Kirk Ray Smith spent more time explaining how they got here than what’s ahead. Smith said when the Juvenile Welfare Board of Pinellas County cut its annual funding of $400,000, Grace House was effectively shut down.

He says through fundraising efforts, the shelter remained operational for another 18 months, but they had no choice but to pursue a different approach.

“We worked our behinds off to raise enough money to keep these doors open because we knew how important this work was so we were able to raise a half million dollars in 90 days,” said Smith, who also claimed the Juvenile Welfare Board kept moving the target after Hope Villages made the required adjustments.

However, the president and CEO of the Juvenile Welfare Board of Pinellas County, Beth Houghton, said they had seen issues with Grace House the last several years and in 2019, they conducted a more thorough investigation.

“A picture emerged that management spoke to and dealt with staff in a demeaning manner. Management lacked client skills and spoke to participants in the program in harsh and belittling ways,” Houghton said.

The JWB decided to give that $400,000 to another agency in the county serving homeless families by placing them in short-term hotel rooms rather than long-term stays at a shelter like Grace House.

Despite the “he said, she said” over what happened, all parties agree losing homeless beds will hurt the community.

“Anytime you lose any of it, it’s not good,” Houghton said.

At the news conference, Smith said, “It hurt to do this.”

Amy Foster, CEO of the Homeless Leadership Alliance of Pinellas, a government agency overseeing homeless agencies in the county said family placement is a big problem.

“There’s never enough family beds,” Foster said.

As of this article, 91 families in the county, some with very young children, are sleeping in the streets or in cars tonight, according to Foster. She believes with the federal funding opportunities through pandemic relief packages, more could have been done to preserve Grace House as a homeless shelter.

“I think there were options on the table including ones the city of Clearwater tried to explore with them that were not the direction the agency chose to go with,” Foster said.

Hope Villages of America will host two community discussions at 11 a.m. on July 27 at Grace House, and at 9 a.m. on Aug. 10, 2022 via Zoom.

The transition to affordable housing will start on Oct. 1.

Read the article at https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/local/pascocounty/pinellas-county-homeless-beds-grace-house-affordable-housing/67-4f38dea4-8c37-4860-9e7f-aea99a621d8f

The largest shelter for homeless families in Pinellas County is closing its doors for good. Grace House blames the Juvenile Welfare Board of Pinellas County for cutting off some of their funding, but the board said the shelter wasn’t being run efficiently, so instead, they said they gave the money to a shelter that was.

Grace House on S. Myrtle Avenue in Clearwater has been housing homeless families for more than three decades. This month, they stopped accepting new occupants and announced they’ll be closing for good by October 1. 

“That’s very sad. We’re not happy about that,” Hope Villages of America President Kirk Ray Smith said.

Their individual apartments allow families to stay together and not have to separate like at some other shelters. Of the 130 beds available for homeless families in Pinellas County, 80 of them are at Grace House.

“That’s a large inventory subtraction, and we know that,” Smith said. “And so it will have a ripple effect. I mean, we’re not naive. We understand that there is going to be some direct and ancillary issues and problems as a result of this.”

Smith said Hope Villages of America, which runs Grace House, had no choice but to close when the Juvenile Welfare Fund voted in December 2020 to terminate its $400,000 in annual funding to the shelter. It cited concerns over its management and financial handlings.

“This is taxpayer money. And so we expect it to be spent appropriately and well,” Juvenile Welfare Board of Pinellas County CEO Beth Houghton said. “And we were spending it on a program that we kept having concerns about. It was a little bit of Whac-A-Mole. You know, we fix one problem and another one would come up, and we fix one problem and another one would come up.”

Houghton said complaints about how the staff treated participants was the final straw. Meanwhile, Smith said they understood the issues being presented and feel they were properly corrected.

“I don’t know if it was a rush, but I don’t think it was well thought out. And I don’t think the implications and I don’t think there was nothing even what they documented rises to the level of closure,” Smith said.

Instead, the JWB handed over the $400,000 in taxpayer funds to the St. Vincent de Paul Shelter. They’ve been doing so since February 2021. Hopes Villages of America will maintain ownership of Grace House and plans to turn the existing apartments into affordable housing.

“The bottom line is, is we know what affordable housing, that’s the number one way to combat homelessness, that we can operate in affordable housing, at the very least, neutral and not being in a deficit,” Smith said.

Read the article at https://www.fox13news.com/news/largest-pinellas-county-shelter-for-homeless-families-closes-after-funding-was-cut

Grace House, the largest shelter for homeless families in Pinellas County, will stop accepting new occupants this month and convert to an affordable housing complex by October, the head of the facility confirmed this week.

The Clearwater-based shelter had 80 beds in 14 apartments, accounting for more than half of permanent shelter units that accepted families with children in Pinellas, said Kirk Ray Smith, CEO of Hope Villages of America, the nonprofit that runs Grace House.

The loss is expected to strain the county’s homeless network, which already has a waiting list of about 90 families, according to Amy Foster, CEO of the Homeless Leadership Alliance.

“We were already in crisis,” Foster said.

The current occupants, who normally stay up to three months while getting financial literacy training and counseling, will be phased out by attrition.

The Juvenile Welfare Board, which awards property tax revenues to social service programs, voted unanimously in December 2020 to terminate its $400,000 annual funding of Grace House over concerns about the nonprofit’s finances and management.

Grace House initially was able to attract private donations to cover operations. But Smith said the loss of the Juvenile Welfare Board funding left him no choice but to close the shelter, even though he had resolved the issues that led to the board’s scrutiny.

“JWB put us in this situation, let there be no question about it,” Smith said.

However, Juvenile Welfare Board CEO Beth Houghton said problems at Grace House, from financial to treatment of residents, were serious enough to revoke funding. It also allowed for the dollars to be reallocated to a “rapid rehousing” program that she described as more effective than a shelter.

The funds went to St. Vincent de Paul CARES’ Family Bridge Housing, a model that places families in apartments and hotel rooms for short periods before transitioning them to permanent housing.

“We’re very mindful that every penny we spend is taxpayer money, and we absolutely have to be, and are very responsible with the funds,” Houghton said.

The board placed Hope Villages on a corrective action plan in August 2019 after a review found the nonprofit did not have background screenings filed for all staff and volunteers, according to a 2020 memo. The review also found high staff turnover, a lack of sound financial practices and two deaths of occupants from suspected overdoses.

By May 2020, the initial deficiencies had been resolved, but the corrective action plan remained due to financial concerns, according to the memo.

Hope Village’s fiscal year 2019 audit, reviewed in August 2020, noted a series of material weaknesses, including grants and cash accounts not being reconciled, and revenues and expenses not recorded in the general ledger.

Smith said those issues were more the result of growing pains than grounds to lose critical funding. Houghton confirmed the last two financial audits submitted to the Welfare Board after it ended the Grace House funding showed no deficiencies.

When he took over the nonprofit in 2016, then called Religious Community Services, he said it was in a $1 million deficit and “three months from insolvency.” By 2020, it had grown to a $13 million operating budget and a $100,000 deficit.

Founded in 1967, Hope Villages serves 150,000 people between its food bank, a center for women at risk of domestic abuse, and Grace House, where 90 percent of residents graduated to permanent housing before the closure.

The Welfare Board is continuing to fund $452,250 a year for Hope Villages’ domestic violence shelter, The Haven.

Houghton said the board continues to fund the domestic violence program because persistent problems were specific to management of the Grace House shelter. In September 2020, three current and one former Hope Villages staff members told the Welfare Board about Grace House management treating participants and employees poorly. In one example, shampoo was not supplied to participants, Houghton said.

Smith said Grace House maintains a 91 percent approval rating from participants.

He said Hope Villages will continue its intensive services for the homeless, like counseling and financial literacy, but it is looking to the future with its affordable housing at Grace House.

Read the article at https://www.tampabay.com/news/pinellas/2022/07/12/pinellas-largest-homeless-shelter-for-families-closes-amid-funding-loss/

Book lovers, be on the lookout for a big, rainbow, retro bus on the streets of Pinellas. The Summer Book Bus will be making 45 stops from Tarpon Springs to South St. Pete before July 11.

The books (which are all new) are free, thanks to the Juvenile Welfare Board (JWB). Each child can take home two books.

“Of course, the kids just love it,” said Jennifer Dodd, Associate Manager of Communications with JWB.

Since launching in 2017, the campaign behind the Summer Book Bus, JWB’s Early Readers, Future Leaders Grade-Level Reading Campaign, has given more than 10,000 books to more than 5,000 children in Pinellas.

This year, you still have time to catch the bus.

Here’s an online list of where the Summer Book Bus will stop through July 11.

Read the article on The Gabber.com: https://thegabber.com/summer-book-bus-brings-free-books-to-pinellas/