From Car Seats to Classrooms: Changing the Future for Homeless Children

The nesting instinct typically peaks in a pregnant woman’s third trimester. That’s when many expecting parents, fueled by adrenaline and joyful anticipation, turn their attention to preparing the baby’s nursery. Every question feels monumental.

Which crib should I buy? Where will we change our baby’s diapers? What color should we paint the walls? Do we have room for a rocking chair? Every decision brings the parents one step closer to that wonderful moment when, at last, they bring their baby home.

That is, if they have a home.

Unfortunately, too many new mothers in Indian River County face a different set of questions. How long will my sister put up with us camping on her couch? Where will I go if I can’t get another motel voucher? Where is the safest place to pitch a tent or park my car if I’m out of other options? How can I possibly work if I can’t find a safe place to leave my child?

That last question was the catalyst for conversations between Childcare Resources and Homeless Children’s Foundation (HCF) that began in 2018. HCF was founded ten years ago to provide opportunities for homeless children to attend camps during school breaks and participate in after-school activities. Knowing their children are somewhere safe enables parents to work extra hours or go to school. HCF case managers provide whatever help is needed to help families become self-sufficient. Most of their clients are referred by the school district.

An HCF board member became concerned that the youngest children, those not yet in school, could be falling through the cracks. Her concern came to life when the organization met a family of four, a single mother and her three young children. Two of the children were school-aged and fit right into HCF’s usual programming model. The third child, though, was a baby, and the organization realized it had nothing to offer. “These are the highest risk children,” Hannah Hite, executive director of HCF explains. “So much development happens in the first five years. If we don’t intervene now, we’ll spend five times as much” resolving the problems that will arise throughout these children’s lives.

Shannon Bowman, executive director of childcare resources, remembers the moment she was approached by HCF and asked, “If you had the resources, could you take twenty more children?” What followed was a gift from an anonymous donor to fund a 2,500 square-foot expansion of the school and full tuition for twenty children for five years. By late 2019, the first children began to arrive.

Hite remembers the little boy from that first family well. “They were bouncing around between living in a tiny 2-door coupe, a tent, and a motel,” she recalls. Tracey Griffis, director of wellness and early intervention at Childcare Resources, adds, “He was sleeping in a car seat and spending most of his time in it.”

This family’s challenges went far beyond not having a lovingly appointed nursery. Imagine not being able to roll out a soft blanket on the floor to give your baby “tummy time,” critical for developing core and neck strength. What if there’s no safe place to learn to crawl, no coffee table for your child to pull up on as he takes his first steps? “He was incredibly developmentally behind,” Griffis explains. “He required some really intense therapeutic services to get to the level he needed to be.”

Tara Beard, director of the Childcare Resources School, explains what happens when a family arrives. “One of the biggest pillars of our program is that we really try to wrap ourselves around the family,” she says. They ask about work, housing, nutrition, healthcare — “all the things that can really impact somebody.” Then the case manager gets to work, helping the family navigate the various services available. “The case manager acts as a conduit,” Griffis explains. “They might take them to UP (United Against Poverty), see if they need services from Healthy Start, do they need to get Medicaid in place or food stamps, WIC, etc.” She adds, “When a family enters our program, we’re creating a history…looking at what they already have and what they need to address.”

Beyond that tangible assistance to the family, the child finally receives what most children take for granted: a safe, comfortable, predictable environment. They are well fed, well rested, and bathed. “That consistency alone has a huge impact on their health,” Griffis says.

With the foundational necessities in place, the school, one of only 6,000 early learning centers in the country to have received accreditation from the National Association for the Education of Young Children, can begin meeting the children’s developmental needs in the classroom. The school’s teachers are all endorsed by the Florida Association for Infant Mental Health (FAIMH) and have been trained in trauma-informed care. For children who need individualized services, behavioral and mental health support and on-site speech, physical, and occupational therapy are available.

Within six weeks of arriving at Childcare Resources, the little boy who couldn’t speak or walk was scooting around and crawling. “When he left here,” Bowman reports, “he was thriving.”

The story of another family highlights the intergenerational impact of these early interventions. Beard explains, “One of our moms was a young girl, a high school student living with her mom who was trying to help. They were struggling with their housing, jobs, school all of it.” The case manager worked with the young mother to get her G.E.D., and then to attend technical college, even accompanying her for orientation and the first day of classes. “Her little girl was a baby when she came here, and now she’ll go off to kindergarten,” Beard says. The mother is “gainfully employed now and doing really well. … She brings her daughter into school like a true adult now.” Even the grandmother is thriving.

The partnership with HCF doesn’t just benefit the families enrolled in the program. Bowman realized her teachers were being impacted by the trauma they were seeing every day. “Families were living in their cars, they were living in a tent, they were living in an apartment with multiple families. Some of them didn’t know where they were going to be next month. Children were coming in having not slept well the night before, sometimes not having access to being bathed. It was truly impacting our teachers.” That realization provided the impetus behind acquiring the FAIMH
endorsements and trauma-informed care training. The partnership, she says, “really just leveled up all of our programming for all of our families.”

No one keeps track of how many babies are born to parents whose housing is insecure. We do know that last year the School District of Indian River County identified 655 homeless students, including families who were doubled up, staying in hotels, or living in cars, tents or other locations not intended for habitation. Last year’s Point in Time (PIT) count, an annual one-night physical count of homeless people, encountered sixty-seven children.

Partnerships like the one between Childcare Resources and HCF provide a life-changing opportunity for the families enrolled. Bowman explains, “Harnessing that brain development that’s happening before the age of five and making sure the children can receive the services they need to meet their developmental milestones sets a foundation for everything that comes thereafter. It really changes everything.”

Students currently in the program are funded through the end of this school year. At a current annual cost per child of $15,752, it will take just over $315,000 per year to continue to fund twenty children in this special program. Where will this money come from?

That’s a much more critical question than what color to paint the nursery walls.