Name was omitted from thank-you ad

In our haste to deliver the Wesley House Valentine’s thank you ad to The Citizen by deadline, we omitted one of our most hard-working dedicated volunteers. Pat Madiedo of Prudential Knight Gardner Realty is the backbone of the Valentine’s silent auction and deserves very special thanks from all of us who worked with her. The Silent Auction is a key part of our annual Valentine’s Day Party at the Curry Mansion, which is our largest fundraiser of the year. The entire group at Prudential Knight Gardner Realty has grown the silent auction into one that all the attendees of the event look forward to, and it raises considerable dollars for our many Wesley House programs. Pat is the person who not only helps to solicit auction items, but also picks them up and helps ready them for the event. She has worked countless hours over the years to make sure it is one of the premiere silent auctions in Key West. Pat is in many ways the soul of the silent auction. With the economic struggles of local businesses, this year was even more difficult to obtain items for the auction because many businesses are just attempting to keep their doors open. Pat and her colleagues worked extremely hard collecting many marvelous auction items and we could not have had the success we had without Pat and Prudential Knight Gardener Realty. From the bottom of our hearts, we thank Pat and deeply regret omitting her on the thank-you ad.

Douglas Blomberg, CEO

Wesley House

 

THE KEY WEST CITIZEN ◆ SUNDAY, MARCH 16, 2008

Marine Bank raises funds

Marine Bank recently presented a check for $2,300 to Wesley House Family Services. The proceeds were raised by Marine Bank employees and the bank’s hospitality wagon at a local event earlier this year. “We’re grateful to Marine Bank not only for the monetary contribution, but also for the time and energy the employees put forth at the festival,” said Denise Dunbar, director of development for Wesley House. Denise and Michael Chelekis of Camille’s Restaurant donated the food served by the hospitality wagon. The Eckerd Family Foundation matched the funds, for a total benefit of $3,279 for Wesley House. The money will benefit the Building for Children fund to renovate the Inez Martin Child Care Center at 1100 Varela St. in Key West. At left, Marine Bank’s Esther Tupino and Mark Todaro, right, present a check to Doug Blomberg, CEO of Wesley House Family Services.

THE KEY WEST CITIZEN ◆ THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2007

Groups that protect at-risk children went before the Key West Chamber of Commerce Wednesday to describe a world where parents make just enough money to disqualify them from free day care and other vital services. That world is the Florida Keys, especially the Lower Keys and Key West. Doug Blomberg, executive director of Wesley House Family Services, recounted the plight of one working mother to underscore how vital services help at risk children and families.“We had someone who had been getting assistance from us, and when they came in for their annual redetermination for eligibility, she was making $38 more a year than the federal poverty rate that allowed her to receive child care and other services,” Blomberg said. “We can serve families up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level, and for a family of three that’s $33,200, which works well for other parts of the country but not the Keys.” Like many other Keys residents, the Wesley House client paid 40 percent of her salary on rent and 38 percent on child care, “which leaves 22 percent for food and other things her family needs,” he said. “We need to help these families; we have a lot of single parents.” Blomberg wasn’t at the chamber luncheon to seek donations, but to give a report “on the state of affairs of child advocacy in the Keys.” “I wanted them to understand the assistance we and other groups give at-risk families,” he said. “We want them to help support our families in this community so the families stay in the community.” Blomberg hinted to businesses that donations to child advocacy groups are put to good use filling gaps in children’s lives that middle- and lower-income parents can’t fill. “On a given day, 7 million children are at home by themselves, making them three times more likely to become victims of crime,” he said. “Every 24 hours in the United States, 15,000 teens try drugs for the first time.” Other U.S. statistics Blomberg gave the audience: ● Day care for one child can cost $7,082 a year; ● After-school care for a single child runs about $3,200 a year; ● Every 35 seconds a child is abused or neglected; and ● A student drops out of school every 10 seconds.

Dan Dombroski, executive director of the Florida Keys Boys & Girls Club, told chamber members that poor children in the Keys aren’t getting the health care they need. He told of a teenager who saw a dentist for the first time only recently. The club sponsors dental work for local youngsters under its Healthy Smiles program, paid for with money from the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office forfeiture fund. “The dentist asked him how he had been able to live so long with a painful mouth abscess,” Dombroski said. “He told the dentist: ‘I’ve learned how to chew on the other side of my mouth.’ “This is the United States of America,” Dombroski said. “We’re not a Third World country.” The Boys & Girls Club provides mentoring and other services to the poorest children in the Keys; 90 percent of the group’s participants rely on Medicaid for health care, which dentists don’t accept in the Lower Keys. Though the club provides sports and recreation programs, health and life skills education, character and leadership nourishment and mentoring for Keys children, financing allowed the club to open only 250 days last year, Dombroski said. “Funding is an issue, volunteers are an issue,” he said.

Business owners and those with enough income to donate can make the difference between failure and success for human beings, said Diane Reagan, executive director of PACE Center for Girls in Key West. The group mentors at-risk girls and provides them with education, counseling, training and advocacy. In the Keys, PACE members earn their high school diplomas at various centers rather than in public schools. “Our youngsters come to us instead of the public school system,” Reagan told the chamber group. “Yet I don’t have the money to pay my staff what the school district pays their teachers. “The result: Reagan finds it difficult to hire enough teachers to mentor the young women.”

Keys companies and businesses can help fill another void in child advocacy, said David Paul Horan, who serves on the chamber’s Human Services Board. He warned of a shortage of volunteers. “All these groups need volunteers; their programs are absolutely crippled by a shortage of volunteers to do the work the funding pays to get done,” he said.

Jamie Lemieux of the YMCA Child Care Center also told the group about its new center on Stock Island, which lets it increase its child-care slots from 35 to 60.

Wesley House Family Services has been working on behalf of the children and families of Monroe County for the past 80 years. Beginning as a settlement program for the children of Cuban immigrants, the agency has grown to provide a myriad of services which promote and enhance the safety, well being, and development of children.

No service is more critical to our community than readily available and affordable child care. Today child care is in crisis in our Keys community. The disastrous hurricane season of 2005 resulted in the loss of over 180 spaces for children in child care. In addition, federal guidelines designed to assist low-income families do not work in our high cost of living community. When access to child care is limited by availability or cost issues, the child, the family and the community suffers. Children are left home alone or are placed in unlicensed child care settings directly jeopardizing their safety and well-being. When families cannot find or afford child care, the parents cannot work. When parents cannot work, the economic environment of the community is hurt.

High quality child care and early learning opportunities are critical to the growth and development of children. Research shows that by the age of 5, 90 percent of a child’s brain structure has developed. Children receiving quality early learning opportunities are found to do better than children not in preschool programs on achievement test; have better attitudes about school; be less likely to need treatment for mental impairment and repeat a grade; and more likely to graduate from high school. Research also shows that those children receiving quality child care and early learning opportunities have significantly fewer arrests overall which benefits the community at large.

As caring parents, good neighbors, and civic minded individuals, we all need to work to ensure that our children are in safe and healthy environments, see that parents can afford child care, and to incorporate child care into community planning. Providing access to quality early learning opportunities for our children pays a dividend that the child, the family, businesses, and the community all benefit from.

Wesley House Family Services

Day care expands its capacity

BY MANDY BOLEN

Citizen Staff

The tiny chairs and tables that children used to occupy at the Inez Martin Child Care Center in Key West have been replaced by heavy machinery.

Renovations to the 80-year-old building on Varela Street began this week, as crews began demolishing the interior classrooms to reconfigure the center and make room for more children in a time of dwindling child-care options throughout Monroe County.

The $1.3 million project, expected to take about seven months, is the culmination of Wesley House Family Services' Building for Children fundraising campaign, said Doug Blomberg, CEO of Wesley House, which provides subsidized child care for working families and foster-care parents.

The 65 or so children who spent each day at Inez Martin have been relocated. The infants and toddlers are at the Wesley House center on Stock Island, while the 3- through 5-year-olds are using space at Key West United Methodist Church on Eaton Street.

"It's a temporary arrangement with the church but we're hoping they will continue some child care there in that downtown location," Blomberg said, adding the site required rigorous inspection to be licensed as a child-care facility.

The renovations will not change the size or footprint of the existing building, Blomberg said, but the classrooms will be reconfigured to accommodate as many as 100 children, from infants to age 5.

Wesley House has raised a little more than half of the estimated $1.3 million for the funding, and is hoping for some additional grant money.

"But certainly, everyone's help is still greatly needed," said Denise Dunbar, development director for Wesley House. "We still need another $700,000 or so."

mbolen@keysnews.com

Len Seelen of Key Iron Works demolishes the inner walls of the Inez Martin Day Care Center on Wednesday in Key West. Once the 80-year-old building is renovated, the facility will be able to serve an additional 35 students, bringing the total to 100.

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Published on Thursday, August 30, 2007

Task force seeks solutions to county’s child care issues

Citizen Staff

A single mom with two kids received financial help with child-care costs until she changed jobs in May. Now she earns $38 per year too much to qualify. Doug Blomberg, CEO of Wesley House, a nonprofit agency that subsidizes child-care costs, cites the story as an example of child-care problems in the Florida Keys. “Now she is paying 40 percent of her gross income for rent and another 38 percent for child care. That doesn’t leave much to pay taxes, to buy gas and necessities,” he said. Blomberg hopes child advocate David Lawrence Jr. can shed some light on solutions. Lawrence is a former Miami Herald publisher, University Scholar for Early Childhood Development and Readiness at the University of Florida, and chairman of the Children’s Trust of Miami-Dade. He will share his expertise on child care with the Monroe County Child Care Task Force at 9 a.m. Wednesday at the Harvey Government Center in Key West. The meeting is open to the public. Blomberg said the Monroe County Child Care Task Force was created in May to study the availability, affordability and accessibility of child care in Monroe County, and to develop solutions. That task force is working with the Early Learning Coalition of Miami-Dade/Monroe —Lawrence is a former chairman— to find legislative solutions to funding problems. Blomberg said local childcare groups also are working with state Rep. Ron Saunders to develop strategies for pursuing sustainable funding. Saunders has suggested the task force first determine who establishes income criteria, then establish a dialogue with them. He said funding could be a state issue for state representatives, or a federal issue for federal representatives. “The formula that the government has put together needs to include a variable or exemption for Monroe County,” said Jessie Perkins, who sits on the board of the Miami-Dade/Monroe Early Learning Coalition. Other task force suggestions have included using publicly owned space, such as public schools, to operate day-care centers.