TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Highlands Today

Program Manager For Healthy Families Selected

Kathy Waters/Highlands Today

Deborah Hadley started Monday as manager of Highlands County’s new Healthy Families program.

ADVERTISEMENT

By Jim  Konkoly | Highlands Today

Published: October 31, 2007

SEBRING — While interviewing 10 people for the job of launching the Healthy Families program in Highlands County, Mary Foy was looking for more than the necessary education and experience in social work.

In Deborah Hadley, who started as program manager Monday, Foy said she believes she found "the spark plug that we need to get this program off the ground."
Hadley, with 23 years in children's services work, will help select and train a seven-member staff to begin offering services by Jan. 1. Through voluntary home visits, home-support workers will help parents get the support, education and services they need to overcome obstacles in raising their children.

"I think we have landed a winner in Highlands County with Deborah, not only because of her education and her experience, but because of her compassion and her passion for what she does," said Foy, the county's acting human services director.

As in other counties, the majority of Healthy Families clients will be young, single mothers. But, Hadley said, the program is open to all parents, regardless of income or age, who are enrolled before their child is 3 months old.

For up to five years, Hadley said, "we can visit weekly, but that is determined by the needs of the family . . . it's not a one-size-fits-all program."
Born and raised in Lake Wales, Hadley earned a bachelor's degree in social work from Florida A&M University in 1984 and went to work in Lakeland for the state Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, now the Department of Children & Family Services.

For three years she was in "pre-protection services," working to prevent children from being removed from their families. In 1987, she transferred to Broward County, where she worked first in foster care and then in adoptions. She transferred to Winter Haven in 1998 as a family case supervisor, and since 2004 was a "permanency specialist" for the private Kid's Home United agency.

"I've pretty much worked in all components of child welfare, and I can tell you that . . . prevention is my most passionate," Hadley said.

Why?

"I have seen what prevention can do" in keeping families "from being torn apart," she answered. "And I also have seen and traveled the journey of a child being in foster care and exiting foster care either through adoption or reaching the age of majority . . . I have witnessed firsthand the emotional distress that children have as a result of being removed from their families."
In some cases, that's necessary for the child's safety, she said.

But, Hadley said, she has seen how helping parents overcome obstacles in raising children –– which, she says, is tough enough in the best of circumstances –– can make a world of difference.
The compassion and passion Foy referred to comes through when Hadley is asked if she's optimistic about child welfare programs after 23 years in the field.

"I will always have that hope, that things can get better," she said, "because I have seen hope that has led to change. I have seen worse situations that have had excellent outcomes."
Healthy Families is aimed at keeping families together and out of the government "system," she said, and has a positive history in other counties.

Hadley, widowed in 2004, lives in Winter Haven, raising her 12-year-old daughter Bethany, whom she adopted at 17 months old. Bethany, a healthy and happy seventh-grader, was a drug-exposed baby taken from her mother at 2 days old.

"She has not experienced any of the side effects of a substance-exposed child, and I attribute that to the fact that when she was removed at two days old she was placed in the loving, good home of great foster parents, with whom I remain in contact today," Hadley said. "They took excellent care of my child."

Healthy Families starts working with families before a child is three months old, she said, because those early months are critical to a child's development and bonding with the mother.

With a grant of $296,000, the county's new Health Families program can work with up to 80 families. For information, call 402-6626.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT