EP# 127 - Strengthening Families in Crisis with Kayla Palacios' Compassionate Mission at Better Together

When families face crises that could tear them apart, where can they turn for a compassionate helping hand? Kayla Palacios, the dynamic VP of Operations at Better Together, joins us on the Good Neighbor Podcast to illuminate the organization's mission of keeping families intact during their most vulnerable times. Kayla shares touching stories and the innovative strategies Better Together employs to provide temporary safe havens for children, averting the need for long-term foster care and ensuring parents can address the challenges they face, from homelessness to medical emergencies, without the added heartbreak of losing their children.

Listen in as we explore the underlying issues that often lead families to Better Together's door, with unemployment and underemployment playing a significant role for 76% of those they serve. Kayla dispels common myths about their work, emphasizing that their goal isn't to replace foster care but to fortify families with the skills and support needed to thrive independently. Through local community collaboration and mentorship, Better Together casts a lifeline to parents, empowering them to overcome adversity and create a promising future for their children and themselves. This episode is not merely a conversation—it's a testament to the power of community-driven action and the transformative impact it can have on families in crisis.

Better Together
Kayla Palacios
VP of Operations
15275 Collier Boulevard
Suite 201-284
Naples, FL 34119
239.470.2733
info@bettertogetherus.org
WEBSITE

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, cabo, jim Schaller.

Speaker 2: 0:11

Welcome Good Neighbors to episode number 127 of the Good Neighbor Podcast Estero. Today we have Good Neighbor Kayla Palacios, the VP of Operations from Better Together. Welcome.

Speaker 3: 0:23

Thank you so much for having me, Jim. I'm excited to talk to you today.

Speaker 2: 0:26

Yeah, I'm excited to learn a little bit more about what you guys do over at Better Together. So let's start off by introducing to our listeners what you guys do at Better Together.

Speaker 3: 0:36

Sure. So our mission at Better Together is to prevent the need for foster care by stepping in when families are in crisis. So we're able to help families who are experiencing a crisis, such as homelessness, temporary incarceration, substance abuse treatment, medical emergencies anything that might cause a family to not be together. So we want to support them through whatever they're going through, whether that's a situation or a crisis, and we're able to do that by providing safe host family homes that are able to care for their children temporarily while they're navigating that situation. And so the average day stay for our kids who stay with host families is about 45 days, versus an average stay of 600 days if a child goes into foster care.

Speaker 3: 1:31

So it's short term but it's preventative, and so we are able to connect families to mentors who are able to help them navigate, set goals, work on budgeting, able to help them navigate, set goals, work on budgeting. Maybe they have a transportation barrier. We also noticed that 76% of the people who come to our programs is because of unemployment or underemployment. So we have another program called Better Jobs, where we're able to offer job seekers job opportunities at job fairs that are held at churches across the state of Florida, and we have some, particularly in Southwest Florida, on a regular basis, so it's a great opportunity to address the root cause of the issue for a lot of our families and just help support them so that they're able to stay together and provide for their children.

Speaker 2: 2:23

Absolutely so. I mean you talk about these individuals and family. What types of challenges might they be going through that they would need to turn to you?

Speaker 3: 2:34

Yeah, so it could be something as simple as a mom who has other children and she has no one to care for them while she's going into labor.

Speaker 3: 2:45

So maybe a mom is expecting and she's going into the hospital, doesn't know how she's going to care for her other children while she's going into the hospital, and so we're able to provide a temporary place for those kiddos while they're experiencing that.

Speaker 3: 3:00

Another one we had a mom, a young mom named Heather, who needed some assistance because she needed some treatment and so she didn't have anyone to care for her son. He was only two months old at the time while she needed to go seek treatment and it was a 90-day program. So we were able to find a host family to care for her son while she attended treatment, and while she was in treatment she was able to secure housing, a job and was able to be reunited with her son once she had successfully completed that program. Which we know for a lot of families, substance abuse is one of those big reasons why they lose their children to foster care, because they're between a rock and a hard place. If I get treatment, I lose my kids. If I don't get treatment, I lose my kids. But we're able to help support them through that process by providing a safe place for their kiddos while they need they get that treatment that they need.

Speaker 2: 3:57

That's and that's and that. Great because, again, it's important about moving people forward, but keeping the family together as well too, and I love that you do that. Are there any maybe myths or misconceptions that surround what you guys do and that we could clear up for our listeners?

Speaker 3: 4:14

Sure. So there's maybe a misconception that's an alternative to foster care. It's not an alternative to foster. Abuse and neglect is fueled by poverty, and poverty is preventable. So we really just believe that we can step in to help families to rise out of poverty, to have a hand up and not a hand out. We're just helping to get them to a place where they're able to be self-sufficient, but also connecting them to a support network and a community that will help them to navigate their situations in the future.

Speaker 3: 5:04

So we work with our local churches to recruit volunteers.

Speaker 3: 5:08

So our volunteer host families, our mentors, our job coaches and our support volunteers come from the local church, and so the hope is that once a family has been helped by our volunteers, they now have a support system that they can come back to and say hey, I'm going through a kind of a little bit of a rough time here.

Speaker 3: 5:27

Can you help give me some advice on how to navigate it? So, now that those parents and those families have those tools in their toolbox if they ever run into a situation again because I mean, I could tell you this young mom, heather she was 21 when I met her and I can't tell you how many times I had to call my dad for some help when I was 21. So for her to have us to call instead of being isolated, it just has made such a difference in her life, and she's still. You know, I say she's responsible for half the gray hairs on my head, but I just love her and I'll be here for her, and so will the volunteers who have helped her throughout the process, for the rest of her life, cause those are relationships that last Absolutely, and that's important to provide to somebody.

Speaker 2: 6:16

Like you said, we've all leaned on our parents or our friends, but if you don't have that around you, you need people like yourself to be able to help support them. So you mentioned volunteers. How do people in the community, how can they get involved?

Speaker 3: 6:32

Yeah, absolutely so. On our website at bettertogetherusorg, we have a page that talks about all of our different volunteer opportunities. So becoming a host family is an incredible way to serve family has been such a blessing for my family and my own children to also learn what it's like to be able to serve others in the community and just to even have that appreciation for what they have in their lives and being able to sacrifice and serve. So that's just been. It's a wonderful thing to be able to step in the lives of someone else and form those relationships with people who need just a little bit of a hand up. In the community.

Speaker 3: 7:23

We also have mentors who come alongside the parents in the situation. They help them create goals and they help them to navigate those goals and connect them, to also connect them to community resources that they need for whatever their situation is that's particular to them. And then we have a job coaches opportunities. So we have job coaches that help with people who are looking for work and ongoing job coaching opportunities, and then also job coaches who are on site at our job fairs so they get to connect with job seekers as they're coming through the doors and help them to engage with the employers, maybe assist with resumes, that kind of thing at our host families are completely voluntary and so they might have some needs while they're hosting, like a diapers or wipes or a meal train. So our resource volunteers are just willing to step in and help with any needs that our host families might have while they're hosting.

Speaker 2: 8:30

So lots of different ways for people to get involved within the community and help out on any level. I love that. So is there one thing maybe you wish our listeners knew about Better Together that maybe they don't know?

Speaker 3: 8:44

Well, I think that the biggest takeaway is a lot of times when we talk about the foster care space, I just I want people to know how preventable foster care can be and just how many families could stay together if they just had a little bit of support, if they had the right people to rally around them and help them through. We could prevent so many kids from going into the foster care system. And so I think that's the biggest takeaway is that there's so many ways that we can help support those in our community and really just have the community flourish because we're all in together to help families.

Speaker 2: 9:30

That's it making the community stronger by keeping the families together. Absolutely. How would our listeners go about contacting you if they you know, if they know somebody who's in need or want to become a volunteer?

Speaker 3: 9:43

Sure. So on our website again at bettertogetherus. org, there is a link that you can click on to refer a family, or there's also a link where you can click to get help yourself. If anyone needs assistance, they can put in a referral for themselves also. And then again there's a page where you can go to look at the different volunteer opportunities, and if you click on the link to learn more, you can find out more about becoming a volunteer and someone will reach out to you directly, answer any questions you might have. And you can even just get on our newsletter and hear about us on a monthly basis. We'd love to share our stories with everyone of parents who have been successful with the programs and just how you can get involved.

Speaker 2: 10:33

Very good, any last words for our listeners?

Speaker 3: 10:37

I'm so thankful for this community, for everything that you all do, and just the collaboration that I always see in Southwest Florida is really inspirational.

Speaker 2: 10:50

Well, kayla, thank you for being such a good neighbor, thank you for what you do for the community and the families here, and we hope to hear you or see you soon.

Speaker 3: 10:59

Thanks, Jim.

Speaker 1: 11:01

Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast Estero. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpastero. com. That's gnpastero. com, or call 239-296-2621.