SRQ MAGAZINE | May/June 2025 In Conversation: Innovation in Children's Services

ENGAGING

READERS THROUGH STORYTELLING

— SERVING FAMILIES IN THE REGION

In Conversation

INNOVATION IN CHILDREN’S SERVICES

A CONVERSATION WITH PHILIP TAVILL, PRESIDENT & CEO OF CHILDREN FIRST

PHILIP TAVILL has been President & CEO of Children First, Sarasota County’s exclusive Head Start provider, since 1996. He obtained a baccalaureate degree in psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1989. He returned to Sarasota and was appointed Executive Director of the Loveland Center in 1991. Subsequently, at Case Western Reserve University, he earned a Master of Nonprofit Organizations from the Weatherhead School of Management and a Master of Science in Social Administration from the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences. Mr. Tavill has worked in the human services field both in direct service and management capacities for the last 36 years. In 2022, Mr. Tavill received the Mandel School Alumni Association Nonprofit Leadership Award. Most recently, he was recognized with the Billy J. McCain, Sr. Excellence in Community Service Award from the National Head Start Association and the Sargent Shriver Community Service Award from the Florida Head Start Association for his impact in elevating excellence across the Head Start community.

WITH ALL THE IMPACTFUL EVENTS OVER THE PAST 5 YEARS, WHAT SPECIAL NEEDS ARE YOU SEEING IN THE CHILDREN AND FAMILIES YOU SERVE AND HOW ARE YOU ADDRESSING THEM?

PHILIP TAVILL What we have seen is a surge in needs regarding behavioral health and mental health in children, families and staff. Think about a three-year-old who has experienced a hurricane.

How does she process the fear that she felt from the adults around her?

Think about how she processes that her home may have been without power like mine was for a week. How does that three-year-old process the disruption in routine, not coming to school and seeing her bestie and her loving teachers? Think about the teacher, the educator who works for us, who, as we went into COVID said,

“What’s going to happen to my job?” That staff member was dealing with, and you can multiply this by close to 200 staff, isolation, maybe getting this virus, the loss of a daily structure and the fear and anxiety about the well-being of her children from her classroom and their families. So, these are some examples around the behavioral and mental health impact. We realized actually, going back to

MENTAL AND BEHAVIORAL HEALTH SERVICES WORKFORCE RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION

a strategic board planning retreat in November of 2014, that while there are some really excellent agencies out there doing mental health work, behavioral health work, we needed to develop our own infrastructure. Our mental health specialists who work with our children, families and staff members have been just one of the ways that we have responded to this discord that has come from so many different areas.

WHAT SPECIAL PROGRAMS DO YOU HAVE THAT HELP CHILDREN AND FAMLIES NAVIGATE UNCERTAIN TIMES? I’ll start with something very tangible. We have our Families First Institute. These are courses that we o er to our families and the community, free of charge. We o er them in the evening, they’re very easy to get to because they’re at our sites where the parents bring their kids. We provide dinner for the family, free childcare and we have everything ranging from budgeting courses to a great course called Circle of Security facilitated by our mental health sta . It’s designed to teach how to become a better parent and how to build your own self-resilience. We have a class called Nurturing Dads about how to become a better father. That’s probably our most well-known class because we’re 25 years in on it. Those are very tangible ways that we help families develop emotional, financial and economic resiliency. All of our curriculum for our children is based around brain development and here are the easy ones: fine motor and gross motor skills–easily observed and measured. Then you start getting into social development, emotional development, and when you think about emotional development, that’s where resilience lies. So, how do you work with children when 90% of their brain development is occurring, to help them develop those emotional tools, including resiliency, to be able to become well-adjusted, to interact well? We use a curriculum called the HighScope curriculum, nationally researched, valid and reliable, that speaks very specifically to resilience amongst many other aspects of a child’s development. We do it in a very intentional and holistic way so that it encompasses the entire family as well as our sta because it’s so critical that our sta also have that resilience for the benefit of mission fulfillment.

foundation said, “We’re all aboard.” But one of the volunteers in the committee reviewing it said, “The kids don’t really need computers in the classroom until they go to kindergarten, and we’re struggling with that. Could you present to the committee?” I agreed and got in front of that committee and I said, “Let me tell you what the issue is. One of our kids gets to kindergarten, but they don’t have computers in their home. Their parent might have a smartphone, but they don’t have access to the software. The kindergarten teacher says, “Now I want you to take the mouse...” Our kid is looking around on the ground for a mouse running around.” The committee laughed and said, “Point well taken.” They funded our first set of classroom computers. Now, every single one of our preschool classrooms has computers. Technology also plays a role for us in terms of our parenting courses. I know it sounds simplistic, but what we have found is that there are families that find it di cult to get on site. Sixty-four percent, two-thirds of our families are single-head-ofhousehold. By o ering those eightten week courses virtually, we’ve been able to increase our enrollment and maintain very high attendance rates. So, technology in terms of virtual o ering is huge for families. Technology in the classrooms is huge, and we also use technology with our sta because we use that HighScope curriculum. Our classroom observation and assessments for progress all happen because of technology.

has been workforce attainment, recruitment and retention. So, we turned our attention to that as our top priority in our strategic planning. We’ve been very intentional, literally since 2016 when we could start to have a little budget breathing room, in working to bring our early childhood educators’ pay to a parity level with public education educators. There are very few places that, never mind being focused on it, are doing as much as we are doing to make that the case. We’ve been highly successful and we’re not done yet–we’re going to keep going with it, so that the vast majority of our preschool classrooms are led by a teacher with a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education.

sta . And we are just bringing on a halftime person who will have a very specific focus on postpartum depression. At any given time, we have a significant number of pregnant moms and new moms so for us to have a highly qualified LCSW with a 15-month-old child herself is very, very exciting. We’re also looking at how we continue to position ourselves well for the future. It’s really thinking about a current unmet need and anticipated need and how we continually innovate to do that e ectively.

WHAT DO YOU WANT OUR READERS TO KNOW ABOUT WHAT YOUR ORGANIZATION?

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE SOMEONE WHO IS THINKING ABOUT A CAREER IN CHILDREN AND FAMILY

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST CONCERN AT THE MOMENT REGARDING EARLY CHILDHOOD?

First, take a tour and figure out how you could be a part of our Children First Family as a volunteer. Volunteers are such a big part of us being a nationally recognized program of excellence. Come and rock a baby, help us administratively or drag bags of mulch around. Bring us your love and expertise. Second, a significant portion of our budget is private philanthropic support, and that’s what allows us to have the early childhood mental health specialist, the Families First Institute. Much of what we do is fully funded through private philanthropy so we’re always looking for that support in an informed manner. We want people to know about us. The third thing is advocacy for high-quality early childhood education. Advocate that every child in our community has the opportunity, regardless of income level, to have a high-quality early childhood education. That advocacy is not just for Children First, it’s for every single child in our community because they all have the potential.

WHAT TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS DO YOU FIND MOST HELPFUL IN FURTHERING YOUR MISSION? We’re going to get in the wayback machine when we were applying for classroom computers to a local foundation. The sta at the

During COVID, there were a lot of articles about the number of teachers who left the national K-12 system. Estimates are that in early care and education, which is six weeks to five years old, 80 to 100,000 educators left the field. We kept our infrastructure intact but we were the exception, not the rule. Combine that with very high cost of living increases locally, rent being the primary one and a field that traditionally has had pretty low wages, and our biggest challenge

SERVICES? Before I’d give them advice, I would say to them, “You’re doing this because you have it in your heart, and that should be recognized and applauded.”My advice to them would be that, number one, they should do everything that they can to pursue their education. One of our retention tools is taking advantage of a state program called TEACH (Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education) and what that allows our sta to do is to pursue certification–a bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, depending on where they’re starting–at almost no cost to them because of scholarship, and with a commitment by Children First to provide them with three hours paid time a week for study. At last count, I think we had 36 sta in the TEACH scholarship program. So, I would advise somebody to pursue their education, because each educational attainment gives you a key to a bigger door of opportunity. The second thing that I would advise them is is to find a place that is entirely mission-based, where they highly value their employees.

WHAT NEW PROGRAMS ARE ON THE

HORIZON? We have a donor who has allowed us to expand our early childhood mental health focus, inclusive of families and

1723 N. Orange Avenue, Sarasota, FL 34234

941.953.3877

info@childrenfirst.net

childrenfirst.net

@ChildrenFirstHeadStart