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Strategic Initiatives
In 2005, the trustees of the Naples Children & Education Foundation commissioned an assessment of the needs of children in Collier County. The study, done by the Lastinger Center for Learning at the University of Florida, proved to be a comprehensive overview of the status of child well-being in our community and an invaluable tool to help elevate the foundation to a first-class grant maker. The study identified several significant gaps in basic services of Collier kids. In response to these findings, the trustees of NCEF elected to look beyond their annual grant program and to proactively engage in strategic partnerships with local non-profits, local colleges, universities and other foundations with the goal of creating long-term solutions to fill the gaps. To date, NCEF has committed $24 million to these “Strategic Initiatives.”The 2005 Study lead to the following NCEF Strategic Initiatives:
A follow up study of the community of Immokalee, where 90% of children live in poverty, lead to additional NCEF multi-year investments in the following:
The 2005 Study was updated in 2010 to include the following initiative:
Collier County: The Pediatric Oral Health Crisis
The Current Issue:
While not often thought of as a health crisis, severe medical complications resulting from minimal oral care and treatment can be extremely dangerous or even fatal. Tooth decay is the single most common chronic childhood disease, outranking asthma and hay fever. Even the United States Surgeon General has recognized six out of every ten children will suffer from tooth decay by age five, with underprivileged children twice as likely to suffer from untreated decay.These statistics hold true, even here in beautiful Collier County. In fact, the Lastinger Center 2005 report found that nearly 1/3, or about 17,000, of Collier County children do not have access to basic dental care. The report also found that nearly seventy percent of children from one Collier County elementary school, with a large population of students from low-income families, were found to have untreated decay and eighteen percent of the children suffered from acute dental disease that required immediate emergency care. A 2010 update of the data supported the need to continue support for dental care for Collier County’s children. This item remains a high priority target for community leaders. According to, Child Well-Being in Collier County: A 2010 Update, the Department of Health reported two hundred and twelve active dentists in Collier County but only nine percent accepted Medicaid patients.
NCEF's Contribution to the Solution:
The NCEF Pediatric Dental Center at Edison State College in East Naples hosts one of the most advanced pediatric dental residency programs in the country with CHS Healthcare as the managing partner in the practice. The model for a sustainable and high level of dental healthcare has been established in this NCEF initiative.The NCEF Pediatric Dental Center specializes in dental services to underprivileged and at risk children, with the capability of accepting 15,000 patient visits each year once the program reaches full capacity. The first floor houses Naples Pediatric Dental Clinic and the second floor is used for classroom and high-tech laboratory space for the University of Florida College of Dentistry.
To date, the clinic has seen over 23,000 patient visits since opening in December of 2008. The University of Florida clinicians, faculty, residents and volunteers, at the NCEF Pediatric Dental Center all agree, the severity of the dental disease observed at the clinic is like none they have ever seen, particularly the rampant disease in children under the age of five. It is not uncommon for toddlers to require either intravenous sedation or general anesthesia in order to provide the scope of care necessary to improve their oral health.
The Ronald McDonald Care Mobile which provides medical and dental screening and health education to underprivileged children refers patients to the clinic. Collier Health Services, Inc., a private, non-profit health care provider that chiefly serves clients at or below poverty level, operates the clinic’s billing and collection activities, payroll, and supply procurement, while also referring clients to the clinic.
With a strategy of community partnerships focused on vulnerable, indigent and special needs populations, the UF College of Dentistry’s Statewide Network for Community Oral Health has become one of the largest providers of low-cost dental care in Florida. It operates eighteen other clinics throughout the state and provides nearly all of the care to Florida’s indigent residents through its network.
Early Childhood Education: The Reform
The Current Issue:
Early childhood education refers to the learning experiences, structured and otherwise, a child receives from birth through age five. Cognitive development, which includes obtaining pre-reading, language, vocabulary and number skills, begins at birth. It has been found that there is an extremely powerful connection between the development a child experiences in his first five years and the success that he will experience later in life. More specifically, the United States government has discovered that a child’s knowledge of the alphabet in kindergarten is one of the most significant predictors of what that child’s reading ability will be by the tenth grade. A child who enters school without these skills runs a significant risk of starting behind his/her peers and staying there throughout their school career. According to the 2005 Study of Child Well-Being, forty-four percent of Collier County children entering kindergarten screened with the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy (DIBELS) instrument were rated at risk of early school failure. Many child care providers argued that more emphasis should be placed on social and emotional development and holistic literacy rather than isolated phonetic reading. In response, the state developed FAIR, a comprehensive test to measure readiness. In 2010, fifty-eight percent of children were considered kindergarten ready according to FAIR.
NCEF's Contribution to a Solution:
The NCEF Early Childhood Development Center is the sister facility to the NCEF Pediatric Dental Center and lies adjacent to the clinic on the Edison State College Campus in East Naples. The facility currently hosts one hundred and eight children from birth through five years old. The NCEF Early Childhood Development Center is managed by the Collier County Child Care Resources, a non-profit child care training and provider agency. Its staff is charged with providing early learning care for the children, establishing a teacher’s resource center and providing continuing education classes for local daycare providers.NCEF, architects, and child care professionals designed this facility to serve children from lower income families while also providing a classroom setting for future educators and a demonstration site where existing and potential providers of early child care and education can experience a Reggio Emilia inspired program. Reggio Emilia is recognized worldwide for its innovative approach to education. The Reggio Emilia philosophy is based upon the following set of principles:
- Children must have some control over the direction of their learning;
- Children must be able to learn through experiences of touching, moving, listening, seeing, and hearing;
- Children have a relationship with other children and with material items in the world that children must be allowed to explore and
- Children must have endless ways and opportunities to express themselves.
The NCEF Early Childhood Development Center also acts as a resource hub for parents and provides space for community meetings and classes. Other community partners contributing to the program include Redlands Christian Migrant Association, the Early Learning Coalition of Southwest Florida and Collier County Public Schools.
Immokalee Early Learning Initiative
The Current Issue:
Immokalee has one of the highest concentrations of child poverty in Collier County. Nine thousand children reside in Immokalee. Three thousand of them are under five years old. The Immokalee Early Childhood Initiative is a multi-faceted initiative aimed at enhancing teacher quality, increasing capacity, affordability, access and quality of early childhood educational care. The Naples Children & Education Foundation and its partners have been working in earnest to address specific gaps in services through a continuum of family and center-backed services that impact the development needs of a child.NCEF's Contribution to a Solution
Family Child Care HomesBased upon evidence presented in the Study of Child Well-Being in 2005, the NCEF trustees engaged in an ambitious goal in establishing a network of Family Child Care Homes to care for one hundred and twenty-five children in Immokalee, ranging in age from birth to 3 years old. The program included subsidies for children in need of scholarship so they may enroll in child care. To date, twenty-five Family Child Care Homes have been licensed and accredited. The goal of the Family Child Care Homes is to create a “family” child care environment for infants and toddlers who could advance to their next learning level at one of the four major child care centers in Immokalee.
Prior to a child being placed in the family child care network, teachers and supervisors must be trained and their homes made ready to accept the children. To accomplish this, the professional development component of the Early Childhood Development Strategic Initiative includes:
- Incentives for teachers to become certified, accredited, and licensed.
- Scholarship opportunities for teachers so that they may attend continuing education classes at the local universities and colleges, which are often cost prohibitive for these service providers.
NCEF’s Contribution to a Solution:
Raising the Quality of Our Educators Collier Child Care Resources (CCCR) and the Naples Children & Education Foundation are working strategically and proactively in collaboration with the early learning providers and support agencies, specifically; Redlands Christian Migrant Association (RCMA), Guadalupe Center, Immokalee Child Care Center, Immokalee Housing & Family Services (IHFS) and the Collier County Public School System’s ELLM leadership to increase the quality of our early childhood instructors in Immokalee.The Immokalee early learning providers expressed the need for support with employee recruitment and retention, career advancement, local education and training, financial supports and a centralized professional development agency to administer such supports. With the help of NCEF and the Immokalee Community, Collier Child Care Resources, Inc. opened the Collier Childcare Training & Resource Center on April 1, 2008 and has had many successes thus far in providing the support that will help lead to positive outcomes for Immokalee’s children. Under this initiative, CCCR is addressing the early learning professional's "career ladder" by coaching and mentoring them to seek state mandated and non-mandated trainings, their Staff Credential/CDA and then ultimately higher-education courses.
NCEF’s Contribution to a Solution:
The Child Care Executive Partnership: A Leveraging OpportunityOne of the exciting leveraging aspects of the Immokalee Early Learning Initiative is NCEF’s participation in the Child Care Executive Partnership (CCEP) which doubles NCEF’s investment in child care scholarships. The (CCEP) is an innovative, public/private partnership program that was created by the Florida Legislature in 1996 to help communities meet the needs of a growing segment of their workforce-working parents. This exciting program leverages public and private partnerships and celebrates entrepreneurial philanthropy. As NCEF enters year four of the Immokalee Early Learning Initiative, NCEF’s investment of $675,000 in scholarships for eligible children has been matched dollar for dollar from CCEP totaling $1,350,000 in new scholarships for the communities’ most vulnerable population.
Pediatric Pre- and Post-Natal Medical Care
The Current Issue:
Without quality prenatal care, a pregnant woman is 10.9 times more likely to have a baby die and 5.6 times more likely to have a baby born with low birth weight. Research has shown that $1.00 of preventative care can save $6.00 of additional costs over the lifetime of a premature baby. Low birth weight breeds other significant problems including organs that are not fully developed, which can lead to lung problems and vision loss. These babies are 20 times more likely to die in their first year of life according to the March of Dimes.Data from the Child Well-Being in Collier County: A 2010 Update. indicate that thirty-eight percent of Collier County resident births were with less than adequate prenatal care, down four percentage points from 2006. Low-income women are among those most at risk for delivering low birth weight babies. They tend to use prenatal care less, perceive more barriers to care, have less positive reinforcement for receiving care, have less access to care, have lower education levels, maintain less healthy lifestyles and have lower compliance with medical recommendations.
NCEF's Contribution to a Solution:
Through strategic brokering and partnerships and a $2,000,000 investment matched dollar for dollar by Florida State University (FSU) College of Medicine, NCEF has successfully introduced a fully renovated Primary Care clinic at the Isabel Collier Read Building in Immokalee, Florida. NCEF’s investment funded renovations to the 29,000 square-foot medical clinic that had been donated to FSU by Naples Community Hospital Healthcare System in 2007. The building had originally been donated to NCH Healthcare by Isabel Collier Read in an effort to ensure that the medical needs of the community’s farm workers and other underserved residents would be met. After the deed on the property was transferred to FSU, Read endowed the medical school’s educational program in Immokalee with an additional gift. The gifts from Read and NCEF were eligible for state matching funds, which pushed the combined value of all three gifts to more than $13 million. Collier Health Services’ (CHS) Healthcare and Florida State University (FSU) College of Medicine Primary Care is one of Florida State University College of Medicine’s regional campuses. Florida State University College of Medicine students throughout the state have the opportunity to fulfill third-year required and fourth-year elective rotations in Immokalee. FSU medical students, who spend part of their third and fourth years of study in Immokalee, gain a more complete understanding of rural medicine while also contributing to the health of the community. Medical school faculty and students provide pediatric and maternal/infant care side by side with CHS providers and staff, almost doubling the existing capacity for pediatric and prenatal services at CHS.The FSU Women’s Health Department moved in to the Isabel Collier Read building in March 2010. The department has one OB/GYN and one midwife on staff. There are also third and fourth year medical students from FSU’s College of Medicine completing rotations through the department. There are ten exam rooms, one ultrasound room, and one treatment room. The department offers prenatal and postnatal care as well as standard gynecological care. An estimated five hundred to six hundred of FSU/CHS patients deliver at Naples Community Hospital, approximately sixty at local mid-wives and less than twenty-five deliveries at Gulf Coast Hospital. In the most recent fiscal year, April 1, 2010 - March 31, 2011, more than 23,000 patients had physician visits.
Out of School Services
The Current Issue:
NCEF’s awareness of the importance of quality out of school programs stems back to the first annual wine festival in 2001 where the Boys & Girls of Club of Collier County was one of two beneficiaries. Not only has the Boys & Girls Club remained a leading beneficiary, the foundation’s investment in high-level after school, summer, holiday, and before school care is omnipresent across the county from remote locations in Southeast Collier where the Marco YMCA serves hundreds of children in after school and summer programming to neighborhood centric programs in Immokalee’s Eden Park. NCEF also supports other out of school providers including; the Miracle II program in Immokalee serving over twelve hundred children per day, Guadalupe Center’s K-2 out of school program which supports five hundred children and RCMA, also in Immokalee, who provides services to over two hundred children per day. Currently, NCEF’s funding assists nearly thirty-five hundred school-age children are provided high quality out of school care.Unfortunately, Collier County has a critical need for more subsidized slots for out of school support (after school and summer programs). The total capacity of available after school programs in Collier County in 2005-2006 was just over six thousand students - NCEF’s latest research indicates that thirty-three percent of K-12 students who need after school care and support do not receive it. After school activities are crucial to provide a safe place for children to go when parents are still at work, helping to reduce the stress on both parents and children. In Collier County, more crimes committed by teens take place between the hours of 3:00 and 6:00pm than any other time period.
At present, most programs are operating under capacity due to lack of operating funds or lack of subsided slots.
NCEF's Contribution to a Solution:
NCEF has generated a preliminary strategic plan to remedy this unmet need. By partnering with the community’s experts in the field, NCEF hopes to provide subsidized out of school programming to over ten thousand additional underprivileged and at risk children in the next five years.The need is even greater in Immokalee where out of school programs are only reaching a fraction of the children most in need. NCEF is currently participating in conversations to pilot an out of school time network of services to reach all children in need of out of school time support in Immokalee.
Social Welfare: Behavioral Health
The Current Issue:
As Florida’s second largest county geographically and one the state’s most culturally and economically diverse, Collier encompasses communities with several high-risk factors for development of physical and mental health problems. Following inconclusive data regarding the incidence of mental heath diagnoses among children from the Study of Child Well-Being in 2005, NCEF engaged researchers at the University of South Florida Louis de la Parte Mental Health Institute to conduct a needs assessment regarding pediatric mental health in Collier County. Although the researchers concluded that there were no accurate estimates available for the number of children who were living with mental health diagnoses in Collier County, the application of the accepted national statistic of twenty percent would result in an estimated sixteen thousand Collier County children that may have a mental health diagnoses.
NCEF's Contribution to the a Solution:
Developed over two years by the collaborative efforts of professionals from David Lawrence Center, Youth Haven, National Alliance on Mental Illness and Collier Health Services and implemented in 2010, the Collier: Health Under Guided Systems’ (H.U.G.S.) primary purpose is to collaboratively develop and provide a responsive and comprehensive system of care for children and youth with behavioral health needs. H.U.G.S. facilitates collaboration across agencies, families and youth for the purpose of improving access and expanding the array of coordinated, community-based, culturally and linguistically competent services and supports for children with behavioral health challenges and their families. The project provides coordinated, universal behavioral health screening and referrals to facilitate early identification and access to care in order to mitigate the effects of untreated problems later on.
Over the past year, the agencies have worked together on cross-systems coordination in order to reduce fragmentation, reduce or eliminate duplication of services, maximize resources and increase the availability of high-quality, best-practice approaches. The agencies participated in collaborative planning activities to develop initial and ongoing cross-agency protocols, including program components and a mutually agreed upon budget for NCEF grant funds. Noteworthy partner accomplishments between June 1, 2010 and May 31, 2011 include:
- The H.U.G.S. Mobile was put into service to provide assertive outreach for screening and education.
- Provided several “Breaking the Silence” classes in various community settings to address stigma and discrimination often associated with mental illness.
- Using standardized/validated instruments, completed screenings with one thousand one hundred and fifty-six children.
- Facilitated linkage to one hundred and seventy children for follow up assessments or clinical interventions.
- Ninety children are enrolled with System Navigators for ongoing coordination of care.
- Psychiatric services were provided to five hundred and thirty-four new, unduplicated children.
Countywide School Readiness Initiative
The Current Issue:
As families and children feel the impact of the economic downturn, more children are in need of child care financial assistance. Data has demonstrated that more than half of all low income children in Collier County have a parent who works full time, year round. However, these are often low wage jobs which offer little or no benefits with little room for advancement. Shifts in the local economy have made the need for affordable early childhood care paramount within NCEF’s long-term strategic initiatives. Research shows that a single parent with two children typically needs to earn at least $16.50 an hour full time or $34,000 a year to meet the basic needs of the family. Yet, Florida’s minimum wage only amounts to approximately $15,000 per annum. For these families access to quality childhood care is merely a dream.
NCEF's Contribution to a Solution:
In an unprecedented level of cooperation among the Collier County Board of Commissioners, the Early Learning Coalition of Southwest Florida, and the Naples Children & Education Foundation; the reality of accessible early childhood care is within reach for hundreds more children living below poverty level in Collier County. The Countywide School Readiness Initiative, developed through entrepreneurial endeavor and spirited collaboration among the partners, assists working poor families living at 150%-200% of Federal Poverty Level with the cost of child care, enabling children birth-five in Collier County access to high-quality early childhood programs. Through this unique brokering of funding streams, NCEF’s investment of $75,000 in the Countywide School Readiness Initiative for the 2011 fiscal year will be matched 1:3 by the Board of Collier County Commissioners and will result in securing $2,400,000 from the State of Florida earmarked for early learning scholarships for at risk children in Collier County.Collier County: Curbing Childhood Hunger
The Current Issue:
The weak economic climate over the past few years has resulted in a significant increase in homelessness and hunger in our country…including many children. In Collier County fifty-eight percent of our children are defined as economically needy. And while these children are eligible for free or reduced-cost breakfast and lunch at school, for many children, these two meals represent their entire diet. It is not uncommon for children in school to be reprimanded for taking extra milks, fruits or snacks without permission, only to learn that the food is being used to feed their siblings or hoarded so they will have food over the weekends. In Collier County there have been efforts to respond to the need of childhood hunger; the majority of out of school programs offer children snacks, many summer programs provide meals and the Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida maintains relationships with twenty-six non-profit agencies who distribute food to Collier County’s most vulnerable populations, including twenty-two that focus on children’s needs. In fact, during the summer of 2010 the Boys & Girls Club served nearly 70,000 meals. In fiscal year 2009-2010, the Food Bank reported an increase of sixty-three percent in the total points of food delivered to local agencies, realizing a fifty-seven percent increase in the number of children accessing food at distributions sites. Currently the Harry Chapin Food Bank distributes approximately 1,200,000 pounds of food in Collier County.Despite these efforts the problem persists. Hunger activists and community experts suggest that more than 8,000,000 pounds of food annually and more than 100 distribution sites would be required to fully meet the need in the community.
NCEF's Contribution to the Solution:
The Naples Children & Education Foundation raised $630,000 at the 2011 Naples Winter Wine Festival to support a comprehensive Childhood Hunger initiative. The NCEF Hunger Initiative, affectionately called, “Lunch Boxes of Love” is a product of an emerging need around hunger instability (food insecurity) with Collier County’s most disadvantaged young people. “Food insecurity” refers to the lack of access to enough food to fully meet basic needs at all times due to lack of financial resources. NCEF announced a partnership with Harry Chapin Food Bank and other community to implement an innovative and cost effective approach in reaching the most underserved and at risk children in Collier County that are experiencing food insecurity and hunger.Through NCEF’s ability to maximize its financial investment and brokering of relationships, the Lunch Boxes of Love Initiative has the potential to provide nutritious food to over 20,000 children in its first year of operation. Within one month of the 2011 Naples Winter Wine Festival, the Foundation swiftly and successfully responded to this critical need by implementing a plan to introduce a Mobile Food Pantry (seen below) which now delivers food to eight strategically placed locations within the community every two months; affording children and families access to nearly 500,000 lbs of food over the course of the next year. This mobile food distribution is only one part of a deliberate and strategic plan to ensure children and families have increased capacity and access to nutritious food. Other aspects of the initiative include strategies such as school-based food pantries and increasing the capacity of current food distribution sites with plans of retro-fitting current space to allow for perishable food storage all with the goal to eliminate barriers for children with food insecurity.