Charity Spotlight: Marion County Children’s Alliance

The Children’s Voice

Marion County Children’s Alliance brings together advocates for the most vulnerable

One-fourth of all children in Marion County live in poverty. Nearly 39 percent of the county’s youngsters are overweight or obese. One in five have had contact with the juvenile justice system.

Those are some of the numbers the Marion County Children’s Alliance tracks as it pursues its mission “to be the voice of Marion County children.”

Established in 2001 by former Sheriff Ed Dean and former longtime MCCA executive director Dr. Mike Jordan, the Alliance initially aimed to serve as a convener of the community’s various public and private children’s service businesses and organizations, from day care centers to the schools to the Florida Department of Children and Families. The goal was to share knowledge and find strength — and solutions — in numbers.

“We are the voice for children,” said Beth McCall, the Alliance’s executive director. “The Children’s Alliance has the ability to convene organizations that can solve children’s issues.”

Over the years the Alliance has made

BY BRAD ROGERS

it a priority to bring children’s advocates together in common cause, meeting monthly to discuss the issues and problems facing children and those who work to serve them in Marion County.

But the nonprofit Alliance has evolved over the years and has become a service agency as well as an advocacy organization with active roles in addressing some of the most vexing problems facing children and their families across Marion County — among them substance abuse, domestic violence, strengthening families and stemming the number of substance-abused newborns.

“People know the things we do,” McCall said, “but they don’t know that we do them.”

Here is a look at some of the programs the Children’s Alliance leads through its various “work groups.”

SUBSTANCE ABUSE The Alliance is home to the Community Council on Substance Abuse.

Through this program, the Alliance educates young people on the dangers of substance abuse and self-destructive behavior through its SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions) clubs at 11 local schools and growing. SADD is a mentoring program that puts heavy emphasis on teaching responsibility and accountability.

The Alliance also is the point agency for the Ocala Opioid and Addiction Task Force, formerly the Heroin/Opioid Task Force. The task force was created by the Alliance in response to growing opioid deaths in our community and has established itself as a leader not only locally but nationally on community response to the opioid crisis.

Hillary Jackson, who oversees the Alliance’s substance abuse programs, said a new and growing problem is vaping by youth, and she calls it “a huge problem.”

The kids aren’t just vaping nicotine,” she said. “They’re vaping marijuana and other things and they’re doing it all over campus (at our schools).”

FAMILY VIOLENCE While Ocala has a shelter for abused wom-

The nonprofit Alliance has evolved over the years and has become a service agency as well as an advocacy organization with active roles in addressing some of the most vexing problems facing children and their families across Marion County.

en and children, it is typically full, so the Alliance, through its Family Violence Prevention Work Group, provides assistance to women and children who are fleeing an abusive situation and have no place to go.

The Family Violence group has helped hundreds of families and has an apartment it uses to provide temporary housing to those escaping violence.

Besides providing shelter and living essentials to those fleeing abuse, the group also distributes nearly 1,000 backpacks at backto-school time, provides toys to more than 500 families each year at Christmas and distributes Thanksgiving meals to 200 families.

SKIP (SUPPORTING KIDS INVOLVING PARENTS) SKIP is a program that works with parents and children to provide families the mentoring and resources “to become more involved, invested and committed to their children’s future.”

Through a number of community outreach initiatives, including so-called Barbershop Talks, where SKIP mentors meet with fathers in the community at local barber shops, the Alliance aims to give support to “at-promise” youth and their parents so they can become stronger families.

Teen gun and gang violence prevention curriculum— Chief Balken came to SRMI to answer questions and listen to concerns from our youth.

After school tutoring at Oakcrest Elementary (Ashley Dries)

One of MCCA's mentees at Emerald Shores Elementary expressing what she wants in a friend Dominic McDonald playing basketball with one of MCCA's mentees

SUBSTANCE-EXPOSED NEWBORNS A startling 22 percent of newborns in Marion County come into the world having been exposed to illicit substances during the mother’s pregnancy. The Alliance’s Substance Abused Newborn Work Group works with the county Health Department, the Heart of Florida Health Center and Kids Central Inc., the area’s child welfare agency, to provide education and assistance to young mothers.

“We try to get pregnant women who are using (drugs) to get into treatment and get prenatal care,” McCall said, adding “the community is beginning to realize it’s a big problem.”

Now in its 21st year, the Children’s Alliance continues to grow in reach and influence, fulfilling its goal to be a vehicle through which to create a coalition of children’s advocates who identify and seek solutions to the big issues facing children in Marion County.

Said McCall: “The opioid problem. The substance abused newborns. The human trafficking. All of these horrible things were not being talked about as a community. Now, because of the Alliance and its work groups, they’re being talked about.

“We can brush it all under the carpet and pretend it doesn’t exist, but it does. So, how can we work together to find solutions?”

Disclosure: The author of this article is chairman of the Marion Children’s Alliance Board of Directors.

The Marion County Children’s Alliance is located at 3482 NW 10th St., Ocala, and can be reached at 352/438-5993 or online at mcchildrensalliance.org.