IN C O NVERSAT I ON
ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS ARTHUR LERMAN, PRESIDENT,CEO OF JFCS OF THE SUNCOAST Arthur Lerman serves as the President/CEO of JFCS of the Suncoast with over twenty-five years of experience in non-profit management. He has extensive experience in providing senior services and supports to individuals with intellectual disabilities. He has over twenty years serving in an executive director role and worked for a national management consulting firm assisting states on their long-term care and behavioral health programs. In addition, Arthur served two terms in Maine House of Representatives and received a Master’s Degree from the University of Pennsylvania. DEBBIE MASON, CFRE, PRESIDENT, TIDWELL FOUNDATION, SVP EMPATH-STRATUM/TIDEWELL HOSPICE Debbie Mason, CFRE serves as President of the Tidewell Foundation and EVP of Empath-Stratum Health/Tidewell Hospice. The Tidewell Foundation is dedicated to the purpose of brightening lives each day through the perpetual support of Tidewell Hospice. By matching donor passions to the charitable needs of Tidewell Hospice, the team ensures that millions of dollars of charity care can be given each year to patients, families and residents of the region. Celebrating its 41st year, Tidewell is now the largest not-for-profit hospice and home health system in the nation.
SRQ M AGAZ I NE I NNOVAT ION I N PH I L AN THROPY : : SUMME R 2021
Tidewell Hospice and our home health agencies and the other health services in our not for profit health system and so it’s a real joy to be able to support the mission of what we do and we did not shut down obviously during COVID because we’re frontline healthcare providers so between our hospice organization and our home health organization, we’re in about 3,500 patient homes a day throughout the six county area. Most people don’t know that out of those 3,500 patients a day, we’re going to them, so we’re in their homes, in retirement homes, in longterm care facilities, in nursing homes, sometimes even in hospitals we’re going to them. So there was fear initially and so some organizations did for a few days or weeks say, “Whoa, we don’t want you coming in our facility.” Even some patients were like “Should I let you come into my home?,” but gradually as the education came out about personal protective equipment, people were more and more comfortable letting us back in to do the things we do. It was a different world for sure, but we persisted. ARTHUR LERMAN, JEWISH FAMILY AND CHILDREN’S SERVICES OF THE SUNCOAST: I’m the CEO of Jewish Family and Children’s Services of the Suncoast, otherwise known as JFCS of the Suncoast. Our mission is to address people within the community who have needs that are not met otherwise. We provide services on a non-denominational basis to a wide range of individuals from youth, to families, to seniors, to veterans, and to folks who are homeless. We’re guided by the Jewish principle of providing assistance to all people. Our primary service area is Manatee and Sarasota counties, although we do provide services particularly to veterans from Manatee all the way down to
Collier County. The end of March, last year, we closed our office down because of the pandemic. We quickly needed to adjust to provide services remotely. That in itself was no small task. We were helped greatly along the way by a grant from the Selby Foundation. Also, one of things that distinguishes JFCS is anticipating needs and being nimble enough to be able to address emerging needs of the community. It was real clear that in addition to supporting people in living their lives differently from what they were used to, there also was the issue of social isolation and loneliness that showed up over time across all ages. Also there was a huge number of people who were significantly impacted financially. And so we went to our donor base and were able to raise over a half a million dollars outside of Season of Sharing funds to be able to develop our own what we call COVID Emergency Needs Relief program, to compliment Season of Sharing. And we gave out over $500,000 to over 350 families to help with rent and mortgage relief, utilities, transportation issues, and food. KRISTIE SKOGLUND, THE FLORIDA CENTER FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD: I’m Kristie Scoglund, CEO of The Florida Center for Early Childhood and we serve children and families prenatally through elementary school. We do a lot of work with children who have vulnerabilities, disabilities, and provide a lot of prevention and early intervention services for those families as it relates to their development, their behavior, and we do a lot of supportive services for children and families in their home. We did close briefly, but then reopened our Starfish Academy in May for first responders and essential workers as well. Our preschool continues to operate at about 50% capacity at this point. We had to furlough a few staff briefly. We did
move fast and furiously to a virtual platform for many of our services so we had to figure out how to provide therapies virtually. Before COVID, telehealth was on our radar, but only in the far future. Instead we did it all in a very short period of time and it’s pretty crazy what you can do when you have to. PHILIP TAVILL, CHILDREN FIRST: Our service population is defined by families with very young children living in difficult economic circumstances, primarily defined by the federal poverty level. So an example of that is a family of three making under about $21,500.00 a year. We work with pregnant families through the age of five at 15 sites throughout Sarasota County. We began our remote services on March 23rd with our 17 case managers and family advocates who work with the families to help them really develop goals and achieve those goals. I think 20 million people lost work in a matter of 30 days. People in poverty are the first to get hurt, they’re hurt the worst, and they’re the last to recover. Int he first 45 days, 107 of our families lost their work and another 68 had greatly reduced hours. Everyone here worked together too. We worked very closely with Kristie and her awesome staff at The Florida Center, in the areas of behavioral health and mental healthcare, and we worked very closely with Bill Sadlo and his awesome team at Boys and Girls Club. We set up weekly food and hygiene kit distributions, all drive through, all socially distanced, masked up. RICK YOCUM, HUMANE SOCIETY OF MANATEE COUNTY: I’m the Executive Director of the Humane Society of Manatee County. We weren’t sure what we were going to be facing either but we did activate our emergency management plan the last week of March last year which puts some very strict COVID-19 protocols in
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