North Florida Child Development Receives Expansion Funds

Early Head Start services will expand in area counties with a little boost from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

North Florida Child Development, Inc. (NFCD) announced last week that it had received $1,051,119 to expand Early Head Start in Gulf, Calhoun, Liberty and Wakulla counties.

“We are thrilled to be able to add the Early Head Start program to the continuum of early child services we provide in those counties,” said Sharon Gaskin, executive director of NFCD. “This addition, along with our current Head Start and school readiness program, gives us the same full-service capabilities in those counties that we have here in Gulf County.”

The grant award was made available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009.

The grant dollars will allow NFCD to provide start-up capital to provide services to 80 additional children and their families, along with creating 20 full-time jobs.

In Gulf County, the dollars will help expand Early Head Start services to an additional 16 children and families and will create six additional new jobs.

In the other three counties, new programs will open in the spring, with additional services provided to 24 children and families in Calhoun County, 16 in Liberty County and 24 in Wakulla County.

“We are proud of the hard work that Sharon Gaskin and her staff performed in obtaining these funds for our communities,” said Jim McKnight, chairman of the NFCD board of trustees. “Our Board and staff had a strategic planning session in March with our community leaders and set expansion of services as a high priority. It is nice to see the planning and persistence pay off.”

In addition to the Early Head Start award, NFCD received a grant last month to open a new 20-student Head Start classroom in Greenville, FL. The funding for this program includes start-up and technical assistance funds along with a pro-rated share of operational funds for the balance of the fiscal year.

Gaskin said that NFCD has additional pending grant applications and anticipates a decision within the next 45 days.

Among those grants is a Community Development Block Grant through the City of Port St. Joe to help facilitate construction of and infrastructure for a new facility proposed for a parcel across U.S. 98 from the new Sacred Heart Hospital of the Gulf Coast, nearing completion adjacent to Gulf Coast Community College’s Gulf/Franklin Center.

The new center would replace NFCD’s facility at the old Highland View Elementary School. Gaskin has already indicated to the Gulf County School Board that NFCD would be out of the school some time in 2011.

A provisional offer for the CDBG dollars has been made, in the amount of $674,000, Bruce Ballister of the Apalachee Regional Planning Council announced at a recent city commission meeting.

The CDBG offer will be on hold – there is a 60-day window for formal acceptance – until NFCD has construction funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development in place.

Ballister estimated it would be January or February for the USDA decision on funding, with the CDBG contract finalized likely in March, provided all funding is in place.

Ballister said the city could go out for bid by early summer.

North Florida Child Development is a non-profit corporation that provides comprehensive child development services to 389 children and families in the five-county service area. The corporate offices are located in Wewahitchka and currently the organization has 46 employees in Gulf County and operates on a budget of just under $4 million.

NFCD provide services directly and indirectly through contracts and inclusion models in each school district.

“We are proud of our collaborative service agreements with the school districts in all five counties as we believe they enhance the service delivery to the children and families,” Gaskin said.