On this monthly radio program, The Children’s Foundation President and CEO Larry Burns talks to community, government and business leaders about issues related to children’s health and wellness.
Guests for this discussion were Matt Friedman, Founder, Tanner Friedman and Chair, Board of Directors, The Children’s Foundation; Chris Lambert, Founder and CEO, Life Remodeled; Blythe Tyler, President and CEO, CARE House of Oakland County and S. Eliot Weiner, Chair, Board of Directors, CARE House of Oakland County.
The hour-long show typically airs at 7 p.m. the fourth Tuesday of each month on WJR 760AM. Here’s a summary of the show that aired January 26,2021; listen to the entire episode, and archived episodes, at yourchildrensfoundation.org/caring-for-kids.
Larry Burns: How has Tanner Friedman adjusted to the pandemic?
Matt Friedman: Change impacted everything and communicating change has become imperative. That’s what my colleagues and I have spent a disproportionate amount of our time doing. It’s been a tremendous amount of work, and on one hand it’s been gratifying; on the other hand, it’s some of the best professional experience I never want to have again.
Burns: Can you give us a snapshot of how 2020 was for The Children’s Foundation?
Friedman: The Foundation granted about $500,000 in emergency funding to over 50 organizations last year. It became obvious to us in the first weeks of the pandemic that the children we serve were going to have different needs than we had forecasted and anticipated. At the same time, the needs that we were prepared to serve were not going to go away. We needed to put more money into the community. Our staff and board worked together very quickly to do that.
Burns: The Foundation celebrated its 10th anni-versary on January 1. As chairman, what are some of your goals as we enter this new year?
Friedman: Looking to the future, we know that we have not yet met all kids’ health needs — the challenge is let’s do more with more. Let’s raise more money. Let’s have more partners. Let’s focus on more programs so we can help more kids.
Burns: We now have eight strategic initiatives, including mental health. Can you tell us about that?
Friedman: Mental health has been stigmatized and underfunded for far too long. As we’ve seen during the pandemic, kids suffer from mental health challenges just like adults do, but kids don’t always have the resources that adults do. We see an opportunity as a foundation to fill those gaps and allow kids to get the mental health services that they need.
Burns: Our affiliates include the Jamie Daniels Foundation, Leaders for Kids, and most recently, First Tee – Greater Detroit. Why did The Foundation bring on these affiliates as part of our family?
Friedman: We have the infrastructure to be able to do more with them than they’d be able to do on their own. We also have reach in the community that would take years for any of these organizations to try to establish on their own.
Larry Burns: You started Life Remodeled in 2010, built houses for three years, and then you partnered with the Detroit Public Schools. You’ve mobilized $35 million and nearly 70,000 volunteers over the last seven years to set the groundwork for sustainable change in four different Detroit neighborhoods. Tell us about that.
Chris Lambert: We started renovating high schools in Detroit: Cody Rouge in 2014, Osborn in 2015 and Denby in 2016. Each of those were about $5 million investments in the school and the surrounding community. They involved 10,000 volunteers every summer, beautifying four square miles around that school.
Then we purchased a vacant building —formerly home of Durfee Elementary-Middle School. We repurposed that into a one-stop shop of opportunity. We have filled this building with 34 of the best nonprofits and several for-profit entrepreneurs who are moving the needle collectively on education, jobs and human services.
Burns: The Children’s Foundation has several partners in your Durfee location and we hope to expand our relationship.
Lambert: In 2017 we bought a church building, St. Clement Church, on the east side of Dearborn. It has 20,000 square feet of space and allows us to increase the programs and reach more people.
Burns: You recently received a grant from The Children’s Foundation. Call you tell us about that?
Lambert: The Children’s Foundation and Life Remodeled have a lot in common. We’re both big believers in collaboration and in connecting nonprofits to one another. We both believe that no one nonprofit has all the solutions to society’s challenges.
Burns: What are some of the things that you’re working on in Durfee?
Lambert: We have 34 organizations serving 14,000 people: 5,000 kids with education, 5,000 adults with good sustainable jobs, and 4,000 children, youth, and adults with human services.
We’ve added some common spaces, turned a locker room into a free video game arcade for kids involved in after-school programming. We also put in a free laundromat. Kids are often truant from school in Detroit because they lack access to facilities to wash their clothes. We added an after-school tutoring space because the demand for tutoring and mentorship is so high.
Larry Burns: Eliot, why have you chosen to be so involved with CARE House of Oakland County?
S. Eliot Weiner: One in ten children will be sexually abused before they turn 18. CARE House is a big part of the solution, offering high quality services to families, treating victims of sexual abuse and working hard to prevent future abuse through educational programs.
Burns: How has the pandemic impacted the organization?
Blythe Tyler: Since we’re unique to Oakland County — we’re the only ones providing forensic interviews, working with law enforcement, as well as treating child sexual abuse victims — we had our doors open the entire time. We expect our numbers are going to rise as things start to open up, because 40 percent of suspected abuse reports come from schools. We see 125 clients every week in our therapy department. When the shelter-in-place order started, we were able to pivot to telehealth. We’re now operating about half in person and half via telehealth. Overall in 2020, our supporters, including The Children’s Foundation, have stepped up to allow us to maintain all of our core services.
Burns: Tell us about the grant you recently received from The Children’s Foundation.
Weiner: The Children’s Foundation has been supporting CARE House for four years and the focus of the grants has been on our community education programs. These programs focus on prevention — training parents and mandated reporters like teachers in how to identify and correctly report suspected abuse of children. With the support of The Children’s Foundation we’ve been able to train an additional 10,000 people. CARE House is the expert on treating child abuse victims but ideally we’d like to put ourselves out of business by preventing child abuse altogether. Unfortunately, more than 60 percent of kids who are sexually abused will never tell anyone. We want to change that. Today, mandated reporters are not required to take training and we want to change that too. That’s what we are working towards with leaders in Lansing.
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