Basic Organization Information
OUR MOTHERS HOME OF SOUTHWEST FLORIDA INC
- Also Known As:
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Our Mothers Home (OMH)
- Physical Address:
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Fort Myers, FL
33967-2757
- EIN:
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65-0510103
- Web URL:
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www.ourmothershome.com
- NTEE Category:
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P Human Services
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P80 Services to Promote the Independence of Specific Populations
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I Crime, Legal Related
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I70 Protection Against and Prevention of Neglect, Abuse, Exploitation
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P Human Services
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P45 Family Services (Adolescent Parents)
- Year Founded:
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1994
- Ruling Year:
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1994
- How This Organization Is Funded:
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Child & Family - $293,299
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Contributions - $81,951
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Grants - $126,074
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Mission Statement
To provide a safe, loving, residential home to adolescent foster children having a baby of their own; enabling them to live together as mother and child, where she will learn by example how to love and respect herself, her child and others. Our Mother’s Home facilitates the educational, emotional, “positive parenting” and “life skills” development of young women working towards becoming self-sufficient, nurturing mothers and productive members of society.
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Impact Statement
Our Mother's Home of Southwest Florida is a unique home for foster care youth who are pregnant or parenting a child of their own. Traditionally in foster care, a teen mother is separated from her baby at birth because there are no homes willing or licensed to care for her and her child, together under one roof. Since 2000 Omh has developed a unique approach in a homelike setting for a maturnity group home in Lee County. With our program, repeat cycles of foster care are no longer absolute discouraging outcome for them; instead girls who show the willingness and desire to raise their own child (with the outcome of independence from welfare) can be placed at Our Mother's Home where she is encouraged to do so. By mentoring an adolescent mother (teaching her by example) how to positively, safely and lovingly care for herself and her child, we are enabling her to "age-out" of foster care independently and with the tools she needs to break the only cycle she once knew.
Revenue and Expenses
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Financial Statements
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Chief Executive
Mrs. Mary C. Lewis, MSW, LCSW
Term:
Since
Jan
2002
Chief Executive Profile:
Ms. Lewis taught fifth grade in the public school system. She stayed home for 10 years raising her two children. She taught at Rock Valley Junior College, in Rockford, Illinois. She ran a drug and alcohol prevention program for the school system. Before going back to school for her Masters in Social Work, she had a wallpaper hanging business and called herself the “Happy Hanger”. After receiving her Masters degree from the University Illinois, she maintained a private practice for 10 years as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker.
Mary has a true love in her heart for children and has dedicated her life to advocating their rights throughout local school and justice systems.
CEO/Executive Director Statement:
Unsightly numbers of foster care youth follow in the footsteps of their parents becoming products of their dysfunctional environment. As well, studies have shown that foster care youth are twice as likely as their non-foster care peers to become pregnant before the age of 19. Even more disheartening… children born to adolescent foster mothers are 3 times more likely than the child born to a teen living with her birth family (support), to become a victim of abuse or neglect themselves; as such the children grow up to repeat the cycles, engage in premature sexual activity, becoming pregnant or fathering a child as well. Those children remain in high levels of educational failure rates and continued cycles of dependency on welfare.
Plain and simple… the answer is to break the cycle…How? Effectively change the outcome through education, support and guidance where it is lacking historically. Without change there is only more of the same and history repeating itself has proven, we as a society are failing our youth in foster care.
Officers for Fiscal Year
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Highest Paid Employees & Their Compensation
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Program:
Independent Living and Life Skills Training
- Budget:
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$75
- Category:
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- Population Served:
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Program Description:
Designed and customized for adolescent foster care mothers (ages 11-18) who desire to raise their own child. Mother and baby live together, full-time within our dedicated facility where she learns hands-on, the negated life skills and positive parenting techniques needed to independently care for her child, upon leaving the Florida foster care system. Our main objective is to STOP the cycle of foster care one life at a time. Our program rebuilds broken and establishes missing foundations for foster mothers which she will then be taught to build upon so that she can productively obtain a sustainable career which will promote her independence in society once becoming an adult.
Program Long-Term Success:
Foster children of this special population are able to complete their high school education, maintain custody of their child, and learn necessary life skills of caring for their baby as a single mother once reaching independent adulthood. Prior to our program in Southwest Florida, teen mothers in foster care were forced into separation from their babies at birth, causing long-term emotional damage to both herself and her child.
Program Short-Term Success:
Program Success Monitored by:
Program Success Examples:
Program:
Transition to Independent Living Program
- Budget:
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- Category:
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- Population Served:
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Program Description:
This component of Our Mothers Home delivers SUPPORTIVE LIVING SERVICES to our Independent Living and Life Skill Training Program graduate mothers. Foster children AGE-OUT of state care on their 18th birthday, starting their TRANSITION into independent adulthood. This program meets the specific needs of each individual mother and child during this period of her life.
Program Long-Term Success:
With this program, young mothers are mentored through the process of independently utilizing those ?life skills? which she learned throughout her time at Our Mothers Home. These mothers obtain first vehicles, apartments, enroll in college programs, acquire career oriented jobs, enroll their children in school, and achieve permanency for both of them.
Program Short-Term Success:
Program Success Monitored by:
Program Success Examples:
Volunteer Needs
Building Repairs, Appliance Repairs, Office Help, and Childcare.
Request for In-Kind Contributions
Baby Clothes, Food, Bottles, Strollers, Car Seats and Clothes for Teen Moms