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A Home, At Last For Foster Children

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By SHERRI ACKERMAN, The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 21, 2007

ST. PETERSBURG - It took the better part of a year for Chante Douglass to understand the Children's Village was different.

That's what shuffling in and out of 20 different foster homes in three years can do to a 16-year-old girl.

The village let her live with her younger sister; more importantly, it let them stay put. No more packing up and moving every few months. No more strangers telling them what to do.

At the village, Chante has chores and shares a big family dinner table with her foster parents and other foster children. She has a bedroom, where she painted the walls blue, hung pictures and picked out SpongeBob SquarePants accessories.

She finally has a home.

"I knew that when everyone around me accepted me," said the St. Petersburg College student, who is 19 now and about to move into her own apartment on the same grassy campus as the house where her sister still lives.

The Children's Village opened in February 2002, five years after former Department of Children & Families administrator Lynn Richard asked officials at The Salvation Army whether they would give the concept a try.

The Pinellas County chapter of the army is the only one in the nation to operate such a village, a cluster of four homes and a program office modeled after the international SOS Children's Villages. The original village was created by a pediatrician nearly 60 years ago to serve abused, neglected and abandoned children.

Love, Education, Skills

The idea is to give children from Pinellas and Hillsborough counties what they need most: a loving family, a home, an education and skills that take them into adulthood.

That means keeping siblings together and providing a stable environment where children aren't bounced from home to home.

"Kids need the basics," said Karen Braun, Salvation Army director of children's services.

In the original model, that meant a mother, a father (if there was a man available, due to war), brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles.

In this 21st century model, it means hiring licensed foster parents to oversee true siblings and foster siblings, volunteers and paid workers to provide respite care as surrogate family members, and a staff that includes a program manager, therapist and caseworker.

Youngsters up to age 22 can live in the homes as long as necessary, Braun said. The average stay is about three years and five months.

Some decide to move on after they turn 18. Others, like Chante, qualify for Independent Living stipends, state funding that helps foster children who age out of the system complete college, pay rent and receive medical care.

Foster parents undergo the same training and licensing procedures required by the state, but they are paid employees who start out at about $8 an hour, said program manager Bruce Wesolowski.

The parents, who typically stay at the village for two years and five months, receive paid vacations, respite, housing, help with a food budget and a van in return for at least one parent staying home to care for the children.

Twenty-four children share the four homes along William Booth Way, an out-of-the-way road nestled in a neighborhood between 39th and 40th streets in St. Petersburg. Plans call for three more homes.

A duplex and newly refurbished single-story apartment building, where Chante will live, share the site.

'A Great Program'

With an annual operating budget of about $1 million, the village must grow carefully, Braun said. The Legislature approved $631,000 toward the program this year. The rest comes from fundraising and program fees.

It's a concept other child welfare advocates, including Jeff Rainey of Hillsborough Kids Inc. in Tampa, would love to have in their backyards.

"It's a great program," Rainey said.

A similar village opened in Broward County in 1993 and houses on average 63 children in 11 houses on 15 acres. But the independent program operates a little differently, said Debbie Levine, chief development director of the SOS Children's Village Coconut Creek.

"It works well," Levine said of the concept.

After a few years, Coconut Creek officials saw a need to tweak the program. One big change: Instead of foster parents living in the home, Coconut Creek has staff members, who work in shifts like a group care facility. "We did start out with a 'mother' committed to the program," Levine said. "But that led to more burnout that way." Foster parents only stayed a few years, she said.

The program operates on an annual budget of $3.7 million, which comes from a mix of state dollars and local fundraising, Levine said.

The Salvation Army's village takes foster children from Hillsborough and Pinellas counties, where Hillsborough Kids and the Sarasota Family YMCA pay $23.51 to $26.80 per child per day for care, Wesolowski said.

Without such a program, some of these children likely would be separated from their siblings because of space issues or therapeutic needs, which often requires a separate facility.

The village children typically are the ones least likely to be reunified with their parents or adopted, Braun said. Usually, it's because their parents aren't complying with classes, substance abuse treatment and other requirements.

Sometimes, it's because the children have several siblings or have reached their teens, when adoption is more difficult. But as these children become more stable, their chances at adoption are more likely, village officials find.

This year, eight children were placed for adoptions, Braun said. "That's a third of our population Why all of a sudden are they adoptable? Because they have a chance to heal," she said. "To learn what it's like to be in a family again."

Reporter Sherri Ackerman can be reached at (813) 259-7144 or sackerman@tampatrib.com.

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