To watch the broadcast interview, visit https://www.wfla.com/bloom/help-for-children-suffering-from-stress-and-trauma/

April Lott, LCSW the President & CEO of Directions for Living joins Gayle Guyardo the host of the nationally syndicated health and wellness show Bloom speak about the importance of understanding childhood trauma and building resiliency for kids as well as their caregivers and parents, particularly during and as a result of a pandemic.

April recently presented as a keynote speaker at the Juvenile Welfare Board’s Out of School Time Conference for 500 childcare professionals. This is a “part two” segment, with Part 1 being the recent interview with Beth Houghton of JWB discussing the conference as a whole. April Lott will provide a deeper dive into trauma-informed care, adverse childhood experiences, and the importance of building resiliencies in our young people and those they interact with.

“Now more than ever in light of the pandemic, we need to train and support those who work directly with children in out-of-school time programs, giving them the tools to address the trauma and challenges children and families face today.”, said Lott.

She went on to say “Many adults have experienced trauma and adverse childhood experiences themselves, so it is important combat those with resiliencies – as it all trickles down to the children.”

Bloom airs in 40 more markets across the country, with a reach of approximately 36 million households, and in Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands and Madison, WI.

You can watch Bloom in the Tampa Bay Market weekdays at Noon on WTTA: Spectrum 1006; Frontier 514; DirecTV 38; Dish 38; Comcast 43, and look for Bloom early mornings on WFLA News Channel 8.

The Pinellas County Board of County Commissioners has partnered with Farm Share and other community organizations to host a free produce and food distribution event. The giveaway will be held on Friday, Oct. 15, in Clearwater. The event begins at 9:00 a.m. in the Juvenile Welfare Board parking lot at 14155 58^th St. North. This is a drive-thru event featuring free fruit, vegetables, and other nutritious food. Anyone who needs groceries is welcome, and the giveaway is scheduled to run until 11:00 a.m. or while supplies last.

To view the full news story, visit https://stpetecatalyst.com/zaps/pinellas-county-announces-fresh-produce-and-food-giveaway/

As part of Infant Safe Sleep Month in October, JWB Strategic Initiatives Manager Rebecca Albert was recently featured in a statewide podcast with Prevent Child Abuse Florida and the Ounce of Prevention, spotlighting JWB’s Sleep Baby Safely Campaign and emphasizing that the cause of infant sleep-related deaths is suffocation not SIDS. Knowing the cause and understanding that it is 100% preventable removes the mystery, so parents/caregivers can be educated and empowered to protect their babies from suffocation, every night and every nap. 

Sleep Baby Safely’s three data-driven tips were also shared:

• Follow Safe Sleep ABCs: Alone, Back, Crib
• Share a Room, Not a Bed
• Stay Alert While Feeding

To learn more about JWB’s Sleep Baby Safely campaign and how it is saving babies’ lives, visit www.sleepbabysafely.com.

Listen to the ABCs of Safe Infant Sleep podcast at: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1653430/9282358-the-abcs-of-safe-infant-sleep-interview-with-ret-maj-connie-shingledecker-and-rebecca-albert

To view the broadcast story, visit https://www.wfla.com/news/making-children-a-top-priority/

The Juvenile Welfare Board (JWB) is a nationally-accredited organization, providing children with opportunities to lead healthy and successful lives.

The CEO of JWB, Beth Houghton sits down Gayle Guyardo the host of the nationally syndicated health and wellness show, Bloom to talk about her organization’s mission, and how it’s helping children through afterschool programs.

Whether you’re playing tackle football on the field, hitting golf balls on the course, or running cross country – safety is the number one priority. 

Bloom airs in 40 more markets across the country, with a reach of approximately 36 million households, and in Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands and Madison, WI.

You can watch Bloom in the Tampa Bay Market weekdays at Noon on WTTA: Spectrum 1006; Frontier 514; DirecTV 38; Dish 38; Comcast 43, and look for Bloom early mornings on WFLA News Channel 8.

Community Foundation Tampa Bay has become the new backbone organization for Thrive by Five Pinellas, a nonprofit focused on supporting families with young children. Through this new partnership, Thrive by Five Pinellas will build on its past successes and explore new opportunities through its collective impact model.

Thrive by Five Pinellas focuses on creating, connecting and supporting community resources for healthy development and kindergarten readiness for children under age 5. These resources include physical health and well-being; social competency; emotional maturity; language and cognitive development; and communication and general knowledge.

“Healthy childhood development can contribute to positive progress in our community’s vibrancy, economic mobility and mental well-being,” said Marlene Spalten, president and CEO of the Community Foundation Tampa Bay. “We’re pleased to build on the work of Thrive By Five Pinellas and lend our expertise in collective impact to enhance and elevate the network.”

It’s common for Community Foundation Tampa Bay to serve as the backbone organization for collective impact networks, meaning it plays a key role in mobilizing, coordinating and facilitating the process of collective impact. Over the past five years, Community Foundation Tampa Bay has started collective impact networks like LEAP Tampa Bay College Access Network, which is focused on increasing college access and attainment, and Wimauma Community Education Partnership, focused on bringing opportunities to prosper to Wimauma residents. In addition, it has played a key role in increasing the number of people certified in Mental Health First Aid in the Tampa Bay region.

“It was a natural transition in Thrive By Five Pinellas’ growth to become a fund of Community Foundation Tampa Bay,” said Lindsay Carson, CEO of Pinellas Early Learning Coalition. “We’ve already made significant progress, and we look forward to being a part of the network’s next phases.”

Thrive by Five Pinellas director Dr. Bilan Joseph, Ed.D. will become a staff member of the Community Foundation Tampa Bay. She will continue to lead the collective impact network, and seek new ways to support the network and further early childhood development in Pinellas County.

The Thrive by Five Steering Committee of 14 organizations – focused on an equitable, accessible, responsive, and accountable early childhood development system – remains in place. Community Foundation’s Senior Director of Community Impact Chuck Tiernan, CFRE has served on the Thrive by Five Steering Committee over the past four years.

Additionally, existing community partners remain committed to Thrive by Five Pinellas, including: Community Foundation Tampa Bay, COQEBS, Directions for Living, Early Learning Coalition of Pinellas, Early Steps at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, Florida Department of Health Pinellas, Ford Christian Academy, Foundation for a Healthy St. Petersburg, Juvenile Welfare Board, Liberty Church St. Pete, Pinellas County Schools, The Well for Life and USF Family Study Center. Individual supporters include: Alyssa Bedard, MPH, educator Catina Bell, Eric Caplan, Eliseo Santana, MBA, and Paul Wirtz, Ph.D.

Founded in 2017, Thrive by Five Pinellas was started by the Early Learning Coalition of Pinellas, the original backbone organization, with financial support from the Foundation for a Health St. Petersburg. Both organizations remain engaged partners in this collective impact work.

For more information about Thrive By Five, visit www.TB5P.org.

About Thrive By Five Pinellas
Thrive by Five Pinellas is a collective impact approach to ensure an equitable, accessible, responsive and accountable early childhood system that will increase the percentage of children in our community “ready” for kindergarten. Thrive by Five Pinellas works with diverse partners throughout the community to achieve a multi-faceted common vision, ensuring that children, families, schools, and the community are aligned in supporting the development of young children. For more information about Thrive By Five Pinellas, visit www.TB5P.org.

About the Community Foundation Tampa Bay
Founded in 1990, the Community Foundation Tampa Bay connects donors, nonprofits, community and business leaders, professional advisors, volunteers and residents to make the maximum positive impact in the Tampa Bay region. For 30 years, the Community Foundation Tampa Bay has been dedicated to making giving easy and meaningful for donors as a way to strengthen nonprofit organizations and build a better, more vibrant community. Since its inception, its donors have enabled the Community Foundation Tampa Bay to award more than $280 million in grants to nonprofit organizations across the country. Learn more at CFTampaBay.org.

To view the full article, visit https://patch.com/florida/stpete/thrive-five-has-new-home-community-foundation-tampa-bay

During the swirling controversy surrounding what I called “The Miracle at Lakewood Elementary,” I have been asked numerous times: Who is Phyllis Wheatley, and what is the Phyllis Wheatley Rise to Read Campaign? In no small way, the question is an indictment of the Pinellas School district’s failure to provide an adequate inclusive education for its scholars.

Phyllis Wheatley was a prominent Black poet, brought to American colonies at age 6-7 from the Senegal/Gambia region of West Africa and sold to the John Wheatley family in Boston. Within 16 months of her arrival, she could read the bible and the Greek and Latin classics.  She was the best-known poet of the 19th century and the first published Black female in America.

The Phyllis Wheatley Rise to Read Campaign is an initiative named in honor of the distinguished scholar in recognition of her laudable accomplishments as a student and poet.  A slave at age 6-7 from the African Continent reading Greek and Latin classics is not just inspirational but a testament to what is possible if the will, determination, commitment and focus are present.

The Rise to Read Campaign is not a new reading method or technique. Instead, it is a deliberate, coordinated community initiative designed to bring a strategic laser community focus to the issue of African American literacy. It is a response to the negotiated Bridging the Gap plan developed by the Pinellas School District in concert with the Bradley and Crowley defense teams.

It is rooted in the African proverb “It takes a village” and the movie “Akeelah and the Bee,” starring St. Pete’s own Angela Bassett.

During Maria Scruggs’ tenure as president of the St. Petersburg Branch of the NAACP, a comprehensive assessment of the Pinellas District FSA literacy scores was made and revealed only 25 percent of our more than 10,000 scholars were reading on grade level.  Based upon this finding and the 50 plus years of district failure, the question was asked: What can the African-American community do to improve the performance of Black scholars?

The answer was, develop a literacy campaign utilizing a collective impact strategy to coordinate community resources and programs to focus on improving the literacy of African-American scholars specifically and community literacy in general.

The approach was modeled in Akeelah and the Bee when the student preparing for the spelling bee lost her coach and teacher, and her mother (Angela Bassett) encouraged her, noting she had an entire community’s support. Consequently, everyone from business persons to the man on the street answered the call and assisted with her training.

The Phyllis Wheatley Rise to Read Campaign epitomizes “it takes a village.”  Utilizing the collective impact strategy, it provides the total community with a deliberate, effective approach to supplement district efforts and does not require anyone to abandon existing programs. Rather, the objective is to partner with established literacy initiatives to heighten the awareness of the importance of literacy to achievement and prosperity.

It is a comprehensive, collaborative campaign that identifies any and all existing programs, provides opportunities to network and observe best practices, modify and improve practices based upon collaborative observations and discussions, and infuses literacy throughout the community — sports programs, cheerleader camps, barbershops, and beauty parlors, etc.

The Phyllis Wheatley Campaign is not designed to compete with any existing approach. Its focus is to amplify literacy and all who are committed to improving it for the ultimate benefit of black and brown scholars. It is a facilitative initiative for the explicit purpose of ensuring our African-American scholars can do what Phyllis Wheatley did — master literacy and read and comprehend the Latin and Greek classics.

To view the full article, visit https://theweeklychallenger.com/phyllis-wheatley-rise-to-read-campaign-2/

The YMCA of Greater St. Petersburg’s collaboration with local educators, volunteers and donors to address the issue of childhood literacy through the YReads! program has been growing for more than a decade. The success of the program is an example of the significant impact community response can have in meeting a societal need.

Reading is an essential part of childhood development, and one in three American children start kindergarten without the language skills they need to learn to read. Reading proficiency by the third grade is the most important predictor of high school graduation and career success. Approximately two-thirds of children each year in the United States, and 80% of those living below the poverty threshold, fail to develop reading proficiency by the end of the third grade.

The YReads! program in our community started with one school location and has now grown to cover 14 Pinellas County schools. The mission of this free program is to enable at-risk and disadvantaged children, regardless of their race, economic status or capabilities, to increase their reading skills through structured after-school reading instruction and mentoring. This early intervention program improves students’ reading skills through the use of a research-based, data-driven curriculum. It also helps students achieve or maintain satisfactory school attendance and behavior, both essential ingredients to school success.

Typically, students between Kindergarten and eighth grade scoring in the bottom 25% of Florida Standards Assessment (FSA)/English Language Arts (ELA) scores are referred by teachers to work with the YMCA team in small groups or one-on-one during two-hour sessions once per week. The program centers around phonemic awareness, sight word recognition, fluency, comprehension and vocabulary expansion. Most of all, it focuses on making reading fun to inspire learning and help students grow.

One measurement of program success is attendance, and last school year (2020-2021) 97% of students attended YReads! regularly. Additionally, the latest YMCA diagnostic testing and curriculum assessments conducted prior to the Covid-19 pandemic showed that more than 90% of program participants improved their reading skills.

This level of impact has only been possible thanks to the investment of community conscious organizations, including the Juvenile Welfare Board (JWB) and the Florida State Alliance of YMCAs. The Raymond James Foundation, Jabil, the Lightning Foundation and the Lightning Community Heroes program have also added their support to the program within the past year.

With such philanthropic support, the goal is to help more than 550 students advance this academic year. A critical piece to achieving that – and rounding out the community collaboration aspect of YReads! – is the important role volunteers play in the program. Volunteers are needed, for as little as two hours a week, to serve as reading mentors. Y staff provide all training and continuous support to help volunteers play a hands-on role in developing students’ positive self-esteem and improving their academic performance. It’s an opportunity to give a child access to the world of possibilities that reading provides.

Click here to volunteer and help children in your community learn to read. Or, contact Michelle Curtis, Chief Development Office at the YMCA of Greater St. Petersburg to learn how you can help support YReads!

To view the full news article, visit https://stpetecatalyst.com/community-voices-research-based-yreads-curriculum-boosts-pinellas-school-success/

Across the nation, people in arrears on their rent are savoring a brief and last-minute reprieve granted by the federal government’s decision to extend its moratorium on evictions.

Locally, as the end of the moratorium approached, the Homeless Leadership Alliance of Pinellas found itself inundated by apprehensive renters.

“We started getting about 30 emails a day as people were in sheer panic,” chief executive officer Amy Foster said.

According to the organization, about 13,140 Pinellas County households are behind in their rent. 

“There is a lot of despair we’re hearing directly from families every day. These are not people who are not working. They are people who are working and can’t figure out how to make ends meet. We do not have a single bed available for families right now,” Foster told me this week.

“There are 60 families that we know of sleeping in their cars and in the street.”

It’s a situation that portends disaster for thousands on the brink of eviction. Without financial help, some may be fortunate to be allowed to squeeze in with family and friends, but others might be forced to sleep in their cars, a surreptitious presence in a Walmart parking lot, or find a spot on the periphery of a city park. Surely you have seen the vehicles, windows covered with black garbage bags or bedding and parked in the same place day after day?

For some, this week’s 60-day eviction reprieve, ordered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, could simply be postponement of the inevitable. At present, according to information compiled by the Homeless Leadership Alliance as the end of the moratorium approached, about 2,100 evictions were near the final stage in the court system. In an ominous warning, it added, “When the moratorium expires, tenants will be served with writs that give them just 24 hours to vacate their homes.”

And go where, is the question. There are, the agency said, just 28 available and affordable units for every 100 low-income families in Pinellas County.

“Clearly, we are in a system that would not be able to handle that influx of evictions overnight,” Michael Raposa, CEO of St. Vincent de Paul CARES, said Wednesday.

An overwhelmed system will mean many people will end up without a roof over their heads, joining, the Homeless Leadership Alliance said, the 1,970 individuals and 2,760 children who are already without homes.

Surprisingly, Raposa offers a note of optimism. His agency has not seen a “dramatic increase” in requests for rental help, neither at its St. Petersburg facility, nor at the parish level.

“The thing that I do know is being homeless is not easy and getting out of it is even harder,” Raposa said. “A household that has been stable for a longer time, they’re probably going to fight to find another roof over their heads, or work it out with a network they have in place.”

What’s exasperating is that there’s plenty of federal money available to help keep people in their homes, but only a smattering has been distributed.

“It makes you wonder if people don’t know those resources are there,” Raposa said.

“I just think that government regulations got in the way,” Foster said of the slow disbursement, explaining that there is a sensitivity to preventing fraud.

“It slows the process, but it’s absolutely necessary. With this temporary reprieve, now is the time to look at what other communities have done” to speed up the process, she added.

And here’s the thing. Foster, who also sits on the St. Petersburg City Council, brought up something that has bothered me in recent years. There is an online application to get rental assistance funds, as it was to get the initial coronavirus vaccine appointments. I think it’s a format that shows little regard for segments of the population that may lack the devices, WIFI or the technological skills to get the money they so desperately need.

“It makes it super inaccessible to them,” said Karla Correa, an organizer with the St. Petersburg Tenants Union with colleagues William Kilgore and David Decorte.

 The grassroots organization has been spreading word about rental assistance money available from the county. “We want to make sure that people know about this,” said Correa, a political science major at University of South Florida.

There’s some urgency to their mission. About one in 20 households faced eviction before the pandemic, according to the Homeless Leadership Alliance, which added that it’s difficult “to predict what post-pandemic rates will look like, since landlords are likely waiting for the end of the moratorium to file.”

Again, the question is, where will the displaced go? Rents are already high in St. Petersburg, said Correa, who lives downtown. “Once the rent goes up, it will be difficult for me to stay. Many people are constantly leaving. People have to find new places. Those places that working class people can live in are becoming few and far between.”

The 21-year-old noted that the county’s eviction crisis is most severe in St. Petersburg, in the 33705 and 33712 zip codes, where the majority of the city’s Black residents live. “The Black community is getting hit by the eviction crisis and by the pandemic. People are getting sick. People are losing their jobs. People are losing other types of income. People are suffering left and right and having to pay medical bills. And rents are going up.”

The Rev. Watson Haynes, president and CEO of the Pinellas County Urban League, agrees that Black people are bearing a disproportionate share of the pandemic-wrought crisis. “We always have a hammer without the nail,” he said. “While other races have been able to handle this, African Americans, we are the last in the barrel.”

Correa and members of the Tenants Union welcome the new eviction moratorium. “It definitely couldn’t have been won without pushback from the people,” she said, praising Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo. – who had once been homeless as a young mother – for her well-publicized protest on behalf of the new moratorium.

“It’s really great to see people fighting back and it needs to be a mass movement,” she said. “We need back rent to be cancelled. Overall, though, it is a major victory in the fight for housing for all.”

Meanwhile, the Foundation for a Healthy St. Petersburg is dispatching people door-to-door to help tenants apply for the important rent assistance funds, Foster said. And last week, the Juvenile Welfare Board launched an effort to help families navigate the process, she said.

Maneuvering the system apparently requires skill and patience. Alex O’Connell, who is studying for a master’s degree in public health at USF, rents in the Old Northeast. She applied for the county’s emergency rental assistance in April and did not receive it until last week. That, she said, was after many phone calls and emails over the course of several months.

It was a frustrating experience. “They did not have locals working on it (and) not even in the same time zone,” she said. “I would prefer local people working on local issues. I would prefer those jobs are here … It was so excruciating.“

Frustration is not limited to tenants. Apartment associations and landlords, also facing pandemic-related financial burdens, are just as upset with the slow pace of rental assistance payments from Pinellas County.  They’ve reported that the state’s OUR Florida system is faster, Foster said. “We are six to 10 weeks for payment and landlords are getting frustrated and don’t want to wait that long,” she said.

Still, some money is getting out. “We just need that to happen faster,” Foster said. So far, Pinellas County has distributed $6.8 million to 958 households from the $21.4 million it received to establish its Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) program, Foster said. And the City of St. Petersburg has disbursed $3.8 million of its approximately $8 million to 397 households.   

It’s certainly good news that the pace of disbursements might be picking up. The new moratorium against evictions will not go on forever. Landlords have mounted legal challenges. Regardless, in coming weeks, thousands of families could be scrambling for a new place to live, or somewhere to take temporary shelter.

To view the full article, visit https://stpetecatalyst.com/a-moratorium-from-evictions-solves-some-problems-and-highlights-others/

Six years ago, the Tampa Bay Times published a Pulitzer prize-winning series entitled “Failure Factories,” exposing how elementary schools in south St. Petersburg were failing area children, and that’s when Bridgette Heller decided to do something about it.

Heller founded the Shirley Proctor Puller Foundation (SPFF) in honor of her late mother — a lifelong educator who implored those around her to “do something” to help improve education outcomes for children in the community.

In 2015, before the Times exposé, Heller started a pilot program with Girls Incorporated in the hopes of narrowing the achievement gap. After conducting focus groups and gathering data, she realized her mother’s hypothesis that African-American students in south St. Pete were falling far behind was correct.

Based on community feedback, Heller decided to start a summer program that focused on preventing the “summer slide.” As the program ended, the Times article was released. Heller said that justified and validated the data driving the concept. She said she realized they were on to something and providing an unmet need for an academically-based summer development program.

“There was just a lot of evidence coming out that summer that adding an academic core skills component was just huge in terms of need,” said Heller. “We had a unique sort of positioning in the community, and we felt like the need was really critical.”

Heller learned a lot from the pilot, and the Math-Art-Science-Technology-Reading (M.A.S.T.R) Kids summer program was born in 2016. After great success and a positive response from the community, the afterschool M.A.S.T.R. program launched in 2020.

Heller believed in the program so much that she and her husband funded it themselves for the first few years. After collecting enough data to show that the concept was viable and was improving learning deficiencies, they began to apply for funding.

The Juvenile Welfare Board of Pinellas County is now their primary funder, responsible for 70 percent of the services they provide, while the United Way has been responsible for another 12 percent. The rest comes from smaller grants, and Heller credits the Pinellas Community Foundation and the City of St. Pete for helping when they were first getting started. She also praises Duke Energy and the Tampa Bay Rays – who recently presented SPPF with an equity award totaling $25,000.

“It’s just been terrific,” said Heller. “The momentum that we’ve built in the last year has been great.”

The momentum has been building because it is clear that M.A.S.T.R. Kids impacts children in the community. Academic Director Keisha Snead said that students’ progress is measured using interactive assessment and the instructional software i-Ready. More than that, she can see the progress every day.

Snead said the first thing she notices is the relationships students build with their teachers, allowing them to advocate for themselves when they get back into the traditional classroom. All the teachers at M.A.S.T.R. are certified through the county and lead small classes of between 12-14 kids with the aid of an assistant or two.

Educators design their literacy lesson plans with guidance from a well-researched, evidence-based core curriculum. They then incorporate science, technology, engineering, art, and math lessons (STEAM) to engage students while also enhancing and reinforcing skill development.

The next thing that Snead sees is the confidence level in students rising. Children are encouraged to ask questions, and with the small class sizes, more individual attention is given. Snead fondly recalls a child that came in as a non-reader. He applied himself through the program, and with the help of his parents, who are heavily involved, he has recently tested for the gifted program at his school.

“So, I’ve seen that it is truly making an impact,” said Snead emphatically.

Snead also proudly tells the story of a young lady going into the fourth grade who was a very limited reader. After working with her teachers, she wrote an essay completely by herself for the first time ever this summer.

“You can just see the growth,” said Snead. “We track and monitor their growth. We actually have data to back up what we’re doing.”

In addition to their core curriculum, M.A.S.T.R. Kids also incorporates extracurricular activities designed to foster personal growth and teach things not usually learned in a classroom. Considering last year’s civil unrest and with cases of police brutality dominating headlines, they designed classes meant to teach civics and social justice. Guest speakers came in to teach them about everything from civil rights to the proper way to handle encounters with the police.

Snead said the plan is to continue the classes throughout the school year, culminating in a field trip to Alabama over spring break. The idea is to see and experience historical sites from the Civil Rights Movement firsthand. Stops include the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham and the nearby museums. At the end of next summer, the goal is to take students to Washington, D.C.

“So, take it full circle,” said Snead, “where they see both aspects of what we’ve been teaching them.”

Every Friday over the summer, they also went on a local field trip. The James Museum for the Reverberations exhibit, a mural tour of downtown St. Pete, the Museum of Science and Industry, bowling, and skating are just some of the fun activities that children were able to experience.

While the M.A.S.T.R. Kids program has already been so successful that they now have two locations in south St. Petersburg, Snead would like to see further expansion into another facility. They currently serve 160 kids, from entering kindergarten to entering the ninth grade.

While the focus is on improving educational outcomes in Black students, the program is open to all. Unfortunately, keeping class sizes small is imperative, and they currently have a waiting list – another indicator of their success.

Heller and the M.A.S.T.R. Kids program looked beyond the “Failure Factory” statistics to the potential of the community, parents, and most importantly – the students. They are helping to close the achievement gap and are focused on academic enrichment that nurtures tomorrow’s leaders. They decided to “do something.”

“This program is not only teaching our children how to build character, but it’s building on the legacy of someone that who taught in the St. Petersburg school system,” said Snead. “She’s still impacting our children to this day.”

To view the full article, visit https://theweeklychallenger.com/success-factory-m-a-s-t-r-kids-programs-bring-potential-out-of-children/

As many of you know, being a parent is tough, especially after going through a pandemic for over a year and a half. The isolation alone can be quite overwhelming.

But a local organization can help if you have a small child acting out, and the services are free of charge and available throughout the summer.

“For us to remain calm with our children really helps to calm them down. So we really need to work on calming ourselves down before we can help our children calm down,” said Emily Chavie, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Supervisor of the Children’s Home Society of Florida’s Early Learning Center Support Team.

It’s a place that provides free, on-site counseling at 10 local daycares in Pinellas County, specifically for the early intervention of babies and toddlers.

“A lot of the counseling for the real young children looks more like play therapy techniques, engaging in social stories, helping them identify and express their feelings,” Chavie explained.

And just like the pandemic has affected parents, it’s also impacted little ones.

Even babies and toddlers can start to exhibit signs of stress, including biting, excessive tantrums, difficulty with attachment and more.

“Withdrawing behaviors, hitting their peers, screaming, yelling, not listening to their parents, not listening to their teachers, things like that,” explained Chavie.

So Chavie’s team of mental health professionals provides hope with free counseling and support to navigate the challenges of parenthood, especially if families are going through transitions.

“If there’s a death in the family, divorce, separation, even new teachers, like those things are really stressful for kids,” she said.

And Chavie recommends to all parents that you must put self-care at the top of your list, take deep breaths, go for a walk, and stay calm to be present and ultimately a better parent.

“You can’t do it if you’re not taking care of yourself. You just can’t be an effective parent. So that’s my biggest advice is it’s not selfish to take care of yourself,” she explained.

If you’re interested in enrolling your child in the free Early Learning Program, call 727-953-3354.

And if you need help right away, you can call or text The Family Support Warm Line at 1-888-SEE-ME-03 or 1-888-733-6303. From 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., all texts are free and confidential.

For more information about the Juvenile Welfare Board, which funds the program, visit www.CHSFL.ORG or http://chsfl.org/support/.

To view the full article, visit https://www.abcactionnews.com/rebound/coronavirus-stress/local-organization-offers-free-early-intervention-services-for-children-in-need