Our History
Lawton Chiles, who served as Florida’s Governor from 1991 through 1998, focused a major part of his administration on building a state that was committed to insuring the healthy development of all children. His wife, Rhea Chiles, created The Lawton Chiles Foundation to continue the Governor’s commitment to children by assisting communities to become Whole Child Communities.
The Whole Child Project is not another program, but a philosophy that uses strategic planning, web-based technology, performance measurement and broad-based community engagement to build communities where everyone works together to make sure children thrive.
The Governor understood that successful nurturing and development of all children required a dramatically new approach. An approach that:
- Starts early—before conception.
- Provides continuous support to parents.
- Is grounded in the family.
- Is holistic, considering the physical, economic, social, cultural and spiritual environment in which the child lives.
- Creates a “no wrong door” culture whereby service providers are committed to building collaborative service delivery networks instead of competitive, single strategy agencies and institutions.
- Builds a partnership across all sectors of our society whose activities impinge on the lives of children.
- Provides state funding to ensure fairness, equity, and consistent outcomes.
More About Whole Child Gadsden
Under the leadership of State Rep. Loranne Ausley and the United Way of the Big Bend, Gadsden County applied to the Lawton Chiles Foundation and was designated a Whole Child community in January 2004. Since then, an incredible cross-section of Gadsden County residents, representing educators, medical providers, the faith community, business owners, parent and child advocates, and community volunteers met in small and large groups over the course of a year to establish this community’s commitment to young children, gather data on critical indicators relating to children’s wellbeing, and agree on a series of priority action steps to improve the outcomes for our youngest children.
Whole Child Gadsden is a community wide effort to get our children off to the best start in life by ensuring they have everything they need to thrive. Families with young children often need help: some lack education, information or economic stability, or they may not know where to go for help. Even busy, two-parent, working families may struggle due to a lack of time, information or adequate child care. Other families are strained by the many demands of caring for young children or dealing with a child with special physical or emotional needs.
We cannot leave it to government or human service agencies alone to meet the needs of families. Whole Child Gadsden seeks to engage the entire community in a commitment to our youngest residents because we recognize their future – and ours – hinges on ensuring the best start for every child.
A growing body of research shows that the first five years of life are crucial to brain development, to acquiring social skills necessary to grow into good citizens, and to developing emotional strength and physical and mental health.
Individually, many agencies and organizations serve one dimension of childrens well-being, from immunizations to early learning programs. Embracing the idea that we must nurture the Whole Child requires the entire community working together. A child who is fully immunized but spends the day without stimulating educational experiences will not realize his full potential. Similarly, a child who has quality child care, but an unsafe home environment may never become all she could be. Ultimately, our community will pay the price for failing to fully nurture the treasure that is our children.