Stories About Us

Families Are Better Off for The Children's Trust

From The Miami Herald, OpEd

By Modesto E. Abety, CEO and president of The Children's Trust

The Children's Trust soon will complete its first full five years, a period in which we budgeted more than a half-billon dollars to help children and families in Miami-Dade County. We have made a tremendous impact in the community, increasing standards of professionalism for after-school and summer programs and childcare centers, while encouraging collaboration between agencies and organizations. As the largest funder of children's prevention programs in the county, we are uniquely positioned to provide leadership and direction.

In 2003, as we awaited the arrival of the first tax dollars, four employees operated a budget funded by a $750,000 loan from the county. For the coming year, 100 employees will manage a budget of about $140 million. Growth has been effort-driven, fast-paced -- even furious, at times. I sometimes suggest that we've been flying the plane even as we build it. Yet despite the steep learning curve, we've invested wisely.

Our 2008 annual report, available on our website, thechildrenstrust.org, details the strides that we have made. Our health initiative providing healthcare to students in public schools now reaches 99,000 students, and its component serving first-time and teen mothers helped 97 percent of them meet their full post-birth care schedule. Our high-quality after-school and summer programs benefited 45,000 children and youth. Ninety-one percent of children who attended a Trust-funded after-school program improved their reading skills. The same percentage of teens in our programs improved grades or test scores and learned to avoid risky behavior. Thousands of children with disabilities were welcomed into our programs and thrived from the special attention our service providers gave them.

Almost 52,000 callers to the Trust's 211 help line were referred to services. In the area of early-childhood learning, our efforts provide parents a meaningful evaluation system and our promoting professionalism in the field can be seen in the 2,000 childcare staffers who received specialized training with Trust scholarships and the 165 childcare centers that signed on to participate in the first year of Quality Counts, our five-star rating system. Two hundred more learning programs are expected to join this initiative in 2009.

Yes, we are proud of what we've accomplished, but we, too, face economic reality. Over the next two years, our budget will be reduced by 25 percent as a result of decreased property values and increased homestead exemption. We must be more deliberate in our process, and more efficient, nimble and accountable as an organization. Our efforts will focus on good communication, setting clear goals and nurturing our high-quality staff and service providers with the support they need to respond to this transition.

We will continue to base our funding decisions on good data, provider performance and community needs. We will continue to act responsibly with the public's money, to be fair, to listen and to focus on how to best leverage our money with other community partners so as to have the greatest impact on the most children, while advancing small community-based organizations. That's the balance we seek. It's an enormous challenge, but one certainly worth making on behalf of the children and families of this community.