HOME Supports the Florida Children's Movement

In honor of Election Day today HOME wants to tell you about a movement that we support in honor of homeless children in our community and all children in Florida. It's called the Children's Movement of Florida -- a citizen-led, non-partisan movement to educate political, business and civic leaders, and all parents about the urgent need to make the well-being and education of our infants, toddlers and all other children Florida's highest priority.

The Children’s Movement of Florida believes that the well-being and education of our children in Florida must be the highest priority of government, business, non-profit institutions and families. The economic future of our state and the stability of the communities we live in depend on achieving this goal. The major objective of the citizen-led, non-partisan Children’s Movement of Florida is to inform the political, business and civic leaders, and the parents and people of this state, about this issue – and encourage them to make the well-being and education of our children our highest priority, including in the way we invest our public resources.

According to the Movement's website the organization's "mission is not about raising taxes, but rather about raising children. Florida's children deserve to be our first priority when deciding how the state's resources are spent, especially when it comes to programs -- such as preschool, quality child care and prenatal care -- that make a real difference in their lives and futures."

The Children's Movement is not about politics, but about standing up for children and working to make changes that will bring a better quality of life to all children in Florida. The movement believes that by almost every objective standard, Florida ranks poorly in measure after measure in how we invest in children. Some examples include:

• Hundreds of thousands of our children are not covered by health insurance.
• The state's prekindergarten program does not meet most national standards.
• Early screening and treatment programs for children with special needs are poorly coordinated, difficult to access and of inconsistent quality.
• A quarter of our public high school students do not graduate.
• Florida's businesses and community organizations are not committed to strengthening child mentoring and parent skill-building programs.

According to the movement more than 800,000 Florida children do not have health insurance, leaving the state behind only Texas in the percentage of uninsured children. About 30 percent of Florida’s public school third graders cannot read with even minimum proficiency. More than half of our high school sophomores cannot read at grade level. Florida spends $51,000 to keep a juvenile incarcerated in a secure facility, while it spends less than $7,000 to keep a child in public school.

The movement hopes to improve these measures by making sure children have access to health insurance and quality health care, enhanced quality standards for the state's pre-kindergarten program, improved screening and treatment of special needs, a statewide parental support and information program and high-quality, widely available mentoring programs for young people.

Multiple studies show that investing in children during the crucial first five years of life helps them attain their full potential and avoids devoting much larger sums to remedial programs later in life, saving vast sums of money for taxpayers in the long run.

The Children's Movement of Florida is supported by a broad and non-partisan coalition. The movement's 27-member statewide steering committee includes 12 Republicans, 12 Democrats and three independents. The movement does not endorse candidates. Its activities are funded solely through private donations – no public funds are involved. The movement does not advocate new or higher statewide taxes, but rather insists that children's issues receive the highest priority and a much larger share of current resources.

For more information about the origins, objectives and leaders of The Children's Movement of Florida, and about the current state of Florida's children, please visit http://childrensmovementflorida.org/

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Changing Perceptions of Homelessness -- How you can Help

As the recession continues to impact everyone nationwide, many have begun to view homelessness in a less negative light. With foreclosures running rampant and unemployment maintaining a steady pace, more and more Americans are finding themselves in unexpected situations. This could not be truer for Central Floridians, where there are nearly 4,000 people who are homeless on any given day and more than 10,000 people who experience homelessness every year. Right now in the county of Osceola alone, there are more than 900 school-aged children who are homeless. As bleak as these numbers may sound, they also denote positive change. Since it has become more evident that anyone, from any walk of life, runs the risk of becoming homeless, perceptions of who a homeless person typifies, has changed greatly. The mythical image of the grungy panhandler is becoming obsolete, as the new face hits closer to home.

Everyday more and more children are being affected, single mothers are finding it harder to make ends meet, and dual income households are barely holding on. These seemingly average people will soon be homeless, it is their faces and of those closest to you that you will begin to see as the need ceases to subside.

According to a study done by researchers from the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Social and Behavioral Sciences on the local region’s population, about one in three (35%) people say that their opinion of homeless people has changed in the past year. Of those whose opinions have changed, 95% say they have become more sympathetic. The study also questioned whether Central Florida’s municipal and county governments should do more to fund programs that address homelessness. The resounding majority of respondents (83%) said yes.

For programs such as Helping Others Make the Effort (HOME), who provide housing and life skills to homeless women and their children, this public change of opinion has significant ramifications. The more the issue is being talked about, the more awareness there will be of the gravity of homelessness. Moreover, the huge need that organizations, such as HOME face, will become more self evident. We help clients get back on their feet by boosting financial literacy, employability, and housing stability. HOME offers on-site life skills training, counseling, and intensive case management. Now is the time to get involved and help others who were once in your shoes. Help us break the cycle of homelessness in Osceola County. Volunteering is the easiest way to make a difference, click here to sign up for our next training event.

*Post by Albery Melo, Program Assistant for HOME. Albery works to bring volunteers and HOME residents together in a partnership so that our families can become self-sufficient and manages our life-skills program. Sphere: Related Content

Homeless in motels- a new phenomenon elsewhere?

We saw this article on CNN about the state of Massachusetts needing to rely on motels as overflow shelters. They cited a "skyrocketing" number of families in motels over the past 12 months- from 17 to 550. Here in Osceola, estimates of the number of families living in motels on a permanent basis vary from 500 to 2500. Yet our burgeoning motel homeless population isn't even on the radar of most local, let alone national, media outlets.

If we were able to get down to only 17 families, I'd consider our county wildly successful in housing homeless families. What do we need to get there?

- more prevention resources, like emergency gap funding for families with a one-time crisis, and mediation services for landlords and tenants

- barrier reduction programs or a bonding program to help families with minor things like previous evictions or outstanding utility bills resettle in a permanent home

- construction or acquisition and rehabilitation of hundreds (if not thousands) of affordable units (and by affordable I mean accessible to families working the lifeblood of our county- tourism)

- intensive case management and life skills assistance to help families who have struggled in gaining money management skills

- recognition by government (local all the way up to the top) and financial resources to back up the recognition of the issue Sphere: Related Content

"The people who are homeless were living in homes here and became homeless. These are not transients -- these are neighbors."

This entry's title is a quote from Cathy Jackson this morning in an Orlando Sentinel article about yesterday's Project Homeless Connect (scroll down for info on volunteering opportunities). I can tell you from our own experience at HOME that these are in fact neighbors, and even, in many circumstances, neighbors who were formerly well ensconced in middle class neighborhoods. All is not well in Florida (and many other places as well).

We have seen a drastic uptick in calls in the past 6 weeks- my guess is that folks were able to use their tax refunds and stimulus checks to pull through during May, but that money is now gone. Many calls are coming from families who have never utilized the social service system and are very uncomfortable and ashamed to do so. My personal take is that social services are the safety net for all of us. As a participant in society, the basic social contract is that you help out and contribute when you can, and when you need services they will be there for you as much as for the next person.

HOME has several new programs for families just like the one discussed in the above article. We have a scattered site program that helps families with a portion of their monthly rent over a period of time, and we also can help working families with first month's rent and part of their security deposit.

Thursday was a particularly good day and a perfect example of how this new program can work. We had been working with a family who moved here from out of state in November when they were forced to short sell their home. The home they rented here was foreclosed upon unbeknownst to them (until authorities showed up to lock up the house). Luckily, the husband had been working day labor 6 days a week, and the wife at a local big box establishment. They have one 12 year old son, and would take turns working and staying with him. When they lost their home (and deposit, by the way, because the management company went under), we offered them a choice between a motel voucher for one month, or first month's rent. They opted for first month's rent, and after a few grueling weeks of living in a motel, working to save money, and trying to find an acceptable rental, found a place early this week. We were able to get the landlord a check within a few days, and also have applied for a portion of the security deposit. The wife calls just about every day to update us and let us know if they have any needs. Oh, and she has also offered to come volunteer for us in her spare time. :) There is nothing better than helping a family get a roof over their head.

So please, think twice before you judge a homeless person or family. They may very well have been your neighbors, coworkers, or fellow parishioners.

If you would like to help, HOME accepts donations for emergency housing/first month rent. 100% of donations go directly to families in need. Simply use the JustGive button on our site and mark your donation "HOMEFast." You can also send a check with this same notation.

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Homelessness- coming to a neighborhood near you?

This article on CNN's front page caught my attention. We, as providers, hear stories like Patricia's on a daily basis, but I think it's now finally sinking in nationwide that personifying the homeless is not as simple as it used to be. It used to be easy to place the blame on the person experiencing homelessness- to assume that their predicament was somehow a result of some vice, or their failure to really try to improve their lives. No more. The new homeless are not necessarily generationally poor. They're middle class, employed, leading a normal life until some crisis happens.

The flip-side of this is that there is a new kind of judgment taking place. At an annual event for families below 150% of the poverty level we frequently see "nice" cars in the parking lot, and observers have a hard time reconciling appearances with true need. If you became homeless tomorrow, would you look poor?

One thing that we've noticed is that the middle-class newly homeless (or families at risk of becoming homeless) are perhaps even worse equipped to handle the situation than the clients of days past. Why? It's too soon to have any serious research findings on the subject, but I think we've got a pretty good handle on it, anecdotally speaking. For starters, they are less likely to seek services, instead continuing to keep their struggles private, as the woman in the CNN story did. An unfortunate consequence is that many families reach out for help too late- after the foreclosure or eviction notice.

We see many people who have no familiarity or comfort level with the social service system. Even though resources like food stamps and temporary cash assistance are in place to help families just like them, there is still a significant social stigma associated with public benefits.

Lastly, the middle-class poor typically enter the system with much more debt than families that have been subsisting at or below poverty level for an extended period of time. This makes "digging out" a lot more difficult.

I'm not sure how these shifts will affect the social service sector, if at all. It might mean repackaging services under a less traditional/stigmatic name, or conducting more outreach to engage at-risk families much earlier in the continuum of homelessness. Regardless, homelessness is no longer a social problem that can be easily written off. Sphere: Related Content