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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More Good News!

HOME has more 2009 year-end statistics to share with you, this time from our program staff!

Out of the 15 families that graduated from the residential program in 2009, 14 or 93 percent increased their self-sufficiency rating score with an average increase of .70. Also, 13 out of the 15 families, or 87 percent, increased their income with an average increase of $382 per month.

This is great news for the families living on our campus. HOME's mission is to break the cycle of homelessness in Osceola County and with statistics like this we are able to see that the program really works. Rating the families on the self-sufficiency rating scale helps us measure our families improvement in employment, transportation, living situations and income. All of these things, working together with case management, allows us to make a change in the lives of our families and to know that we are making a difference! Sphere: Related Content

Bill Passed to Prevent Homelessness

HOME will be receiving more benefits from the government to help homeless families. According to the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, President Obama signed a bill yesterday that would alleviate and prevent homelessness in the United States.

Both the House and the Senate passed the bill entitled, The Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009. According to the Law Center the bill

"Includes a measure to reauthorize the housing and shelter programs of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act - the first and still only major legislation addressing homelessness, for the first time in 17 years. It also includes a measure to protect the rights of renters in foreclosure - a major step that will help prevent them from becoming homeless."

Both bills will be helpful to HOME as we navigate families in the right direction ... toward their own home. A few highlights of the bill, announced by the Law Center, that will benefit HOME include:

"Rename and amend the Emergency Shelter Grant program to allow nonprofits to provide a broader range of services, including short- and medium-term rental assistance, utility payments, housing relocation and stabilization services, and other services to keep people in housing or to move them quickly into housing. Families living doubled up would be eligible to receive services funded by this section

Expand the definition of homelessness to include unaccompanied youth and homeless families with children and youth who have a long-term history of housing instability and can be expected to continue to experience instability due to disabilities, substance abuse disorders, history of abuse, or multiple barriers to employment; as well as families living doubled up, living in motels or hotels or other housing and who are facing eviction within 14 days"

Also, according to the report

"The Tenants' protections portion of the bill will allow bona fide tenants to remain in their residence, pursuant to their lease, following a foreclosure of the property, except when the successor in interest or subsequent purchaser will occupy the unit as a primary residence. In that case, the tenant must receive notice to vacate at least 90 days before the effective date of such notice."

With this policy support, HOME and other organizations working with homeless families have the ability to give families a new start. Sphere: Related Content

Editorial

We saw this in the paper this weekend and were very proud- it's by a HOME employee "alum" who many of you know, Cliff Chong. Cliff has gone back to UCF to pursue his master's degree in social work, but we can tell that homelessness and self-sufficiency are still in his heart. Great job, Cliff. Sphere: Related Content

McKinney Vento Reauthorization

Taken from a brief sent out by the National Alliance to End Homelessness:

House Committee Approves McKinney-Vento Reauthorization Bill
Last Thursday, July 31, the House Financial Services Committee unanimously voted in favor of H.R. 840, the HEARTH Act, legislation introduced by the late Representative Julia Carson (D-IN) and Rep. Geoff Davis (R-KY) to reauthorize HUD's McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Grants program. The bill passed with a manager's amendment offered by Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI) and Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity Chair Maxine Waters (D-CA). The manager's amendment makes the bill similar to the McKinney reauthorization bill in the Senate, the Community Partnership to End Homelessness Act (S. 1518).

The approved manager's amendment would slightly expand the HUD definition of homeless to include individuals temporarily in institutional care who will become homeless upon leaving, those who will imminently lose their housing that lack the resources to find alternative housing, those who will be evicted within 14 days, those living in a motel or doubled up who either lack the resources to stay for more than 14 days or must leave within 14 days, and those fleeing domestic violence.

This is significant in that the definition for homelessness includes families in motels and those doubled up- a big deal for us, since 80% of our callers are not "technically" homeless.

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Live from Seattle!

So here I am in cold, rainy, dreary Seattle, missing the warm rays of the Florida sun. I was lucky enough to receive a scholarship to the Conference on Family Homelessness, and have been soaking in the collective wisdom of about 700 peers for the past day. Particularly of interest to HOME are sessions on designing and funding housing subsidy programs, designing and funding prevention programs, and policy advocacy. I also attended an excellent session on self-sufficiency rating scale tools, which HOME currently uses and Community Vision is making an integral part of their self-sufficiency effort as well.

There has been an undercurrent of excitement in relation to the upcoming change in leadership at the White House, and policy leaders seem to feel pretty confident that funding for mainstays such as McKinney-Vento and the Section 8 program will be maintained if not increased during the upcoming administration. The push to end family homelessness is bipartisan and far-reaching: I think we are close to reaching the "tipping point" on this issue becoming something the public and leaders both perceive as a key priority. I am not sure if this is because the current economic environment is making the "two paychecks from homelessness" less of a cliche and more of a reality for many families, or maybe it's a result of the out of control foreclosure rate. Either way, it seems that when I turn on any national news program, poverty and homelessness are more a part of the conversation (and less of a stigma) than ever before. Sphere: Related Content