Ft Myers Beach - Good Neighbor

ST INS CARES-4KIDS of SWFL-Homes, Hope, And Healing

• "Cabo" Jim Schaller • Season 5 • Episode 35

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A home for every child sounds simple until you see the real barriers: empty pantries, unstable housing, and trauma that follows kids into every new placement. We sit down with Karlene Masse,  Partner Engagement Officer from 4Kids Southwest Florida to unpack how prevention, foster care, and therapy fit together to keep children safe and help families heal.

We start with the ground game of prevention. Through the CarePortal, caseworkers flag urgent needs so community partners and churches can deliver beds, food, clothing, and utilities support before a child is removed. When removal is necessary, 4Kids handles licensing and training for Christian foster families and works hand‑in‑hand with DCF and the Children’s Network to align placements with reunification plans. Karlene clarifies the crucial difference between fostering and adoption, the timelines birth parents navigate, and how decisions shift when families can’t safely reunify.

Then we dig into healing. Children in foster care face elevated PTSD risk, so 4Kids offers EPIC trauma therapy that addresses emotional, physical, intellectual, and character needs—often at no cost. Therapists coach foster parents and biological children on co‑regulation, routines, triggers, and trust‑building so homes are calmer and progress sticks. With 28 active foster families, 15 in the licensing pipeline, and new PRIDE cohorts underway, the team is scaling capacity while keeping stability high through the Family Advocacy Ministry—volunteers who run meal trains, babysit for respite, and handle practical needs that prevent burnout.

If fostering isn’t your path, there are still meaningful ways to move the needle. Become a Defender at a dollar a day. Sponsor events as a business. Host a donor night to rally your network. Every action keeps therapy hours open, expands training seats, and fills the gap left by limited state funding. Ready to help a child sleep safer tonight and a family stand stronger tomorrow? Follow the show, share this conversation with a friend, and leave a review so more people find it.

4KIDS of SWFL
Karlene Masse
Partner Engagement Officer
KarleneM@4KIDS.us
239-483-8533
4kids.us

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Intro/Close:

Welcome to the State Insurance U.S. State Cares Podcast, where we celebrate the heart of our community. Each episode we highlight local charities and nonprofits who are bringing hope, health, and healing to those who need it most. Get ready to be inspired by the amazing stories of people making a difference. Because together, we'll be careful.

Gail Langner:

Well, hi, it's me, Gail Langner, back again for State Insurance Care. And we are so excited today to have Karlene masse with 4KIDS Southwest Florida as our guest today. So, Karlene, thanks for taking some time to join us today. Appreciate that.

Karlene Masse:

Absolutely. My pleasure.

Gail Langner:

Well, for those of the people that don't know, what is 4K Southwest Florida? It's the actually the number 4 Kids Southwest Florida, right? Right. Everybody thinks. Exactly. What do you do? We're honored to donate to you and help you in any way we can, but I know a lot of people don't necessarily know what we know.

Karlene Masse:

Absolutely. So, 4 Kids of Southwest Florida is a nonprofit organization that serves all five of our counties within Southwest Florida. So Lee County, Collier, Charlotte, Hendry, and Glade. And really our goal is to have a home for every child. Every day kids are being removed from their homes through no fault of their own. And we're really placing them in the and they're placing the foster care system. So what 4Kids does is what we believe in is a child for every home, where we can offer hopes, homes, and healing for them while they're in that process. Our mission is simple. We want to go through three different paradigms. So hope being our preventative care. So we use our implementing partner care portal where we connect with community leaders and churches to engage in any type of preventative care. So if there is a family that gets DCF called on them and they have a welfare check, but it's not necessarily grounds for that child to be removed, what we would do is essentially DCF will place a ticket through our care portal system that will alert all of our community members and churches that are on that system to help with the care that they need, whether it's new beds, food, um, if they need clothes, things of that nature. So the kind of the red flags that DCF will do during a welfare check. Our homes initiative is simple. We want a home for every child. So we provide the licensing as well as the training for uh couples and single people to become foster parents. Um the prerequisite is that they are Christian. That is the only thing that we ask for, um, and that they're heterosexual. But other than that, um we go through that entire care system with them. And then our healing portion is really what differentiates us. It's really the um we offer in trauma therapy for all of the children, the families, and the biological children of the parents um throughout their process while they have that child in the foster care home. So within 24 hours, we have them set up with one of our uh trauma care therapies therapists in the market, and we have them on their way to healing. So that's in a nutshell what we do, um, which is really exciting.

Gail Langner:

What do you Karlene, is probably the biggest challenges that face children and families in our area right now?

Karlene Masse:

That's a great question, Gail. Um, truly, it's gonna be food and housing. Um, you know, if you really think about it, it is a vicious pattern that occurs in in our in our area. Um without housing or without food, you know, you have these parents, these adults that get into very precarious situations. And when you're desperate or under pressure, that then leads to the neglect and the hunger of children, which is then in turns them getting them placed into a foster into the foster care system. So if there is a way for us to help on that preventative side or even help with finding home placements while the families get together, you know, get back on track, that's really the goal in it.

Gail Langner:

But hunger and housing is definitely getting how do how can you be proactive on that? I mean, I know DCF you said helps when the children, when there's a red flag raised, but um, is there any way to I mean, how do you go about that?

Karlene Masse:

So, really what it is is that we are one of the four. So DCF is really kind of the privatized, you know, segment throughout the state of Florida. Then each set each region has their kind of like middleman, as I like to call it. Here we work alongside with children's network. And so children's network, when they have a child in DCF that is placed um in the in the foster care system of some sort, um, whether it's through a group home or um, you know, any other home, they'll actually go ahead and get caseworkers that are gonna call, you know, the four or five organizations that they have. We are okay. We are one of those organizations that we do that. Um, but again, our preventative side is that hope process um and really just finding the foster care system on there. So it's just looking at it from that approach. Obviously, hunger, housing, those are other different approaches. We where we have wonderful organizations that will help with that. But our real heart is to help those children that once they are placed in those situations that we can help them.

Gail Langner:

Okay. When um what was I was gonna ask you? I thought, oh, I was that probably see while you were talking, I was thinking of something else to ask. That was what I the problem I had when I was on TV as well. So um I'm thinking about the next question. Um so for you, uh I know we've known each other for a long time when you were with Way FM. What brought you to be in help with this mission instead?

Karlene Masse:

With 4Kids? Oh. So I've heard about this organization years ago. I lived in Broward County, the east coast of Florida, for many a decade, and I've known about 4Kids since then. Uh, that's where actually the organization was founded through Cavalry Child Hole in Fort Lauderdale. And I've known about what they do, um the wonderful work that they're doing on that coast, um, because it goes beyond the foster care homes, obviously when they're children, but they have different implementations of transitional living. Um, once a child ages out of foster care, they actually have homes for them where they can help them and educate them on all the things that the government can offer them because they've been in the foster care system. They also have homes for parents for mothers that are pregnant that are on the streets, they go in and they kind of have a um recorpora of um a readmission into or retransition into society once they have the kids. So seeing that living on that coast, I was always enamored with this organization. And so when I moved here to Southwest Florida four years ago, Rick Jacobs, which is our executive director, he actually was moving back into this area and he was starting up their first satellite office in Southwest Florida. So me and him have been friends for a really long time. And um, when I found out he was here, I actually engaged with them while I was um on the Benita Springs Estero uh Leadership Academy when I was still in that in that side of town in that lake. Um and I just always have kept in touch with them. I just love what they're doing. I love how we're trying our, you know, to get to a place where we are mirroring what they're doing on the East Coast and really have those um initiatives and and those um, you know, other areas of support here in Southwest Florida.

Gail Langner:

I know he's a really great guy. I think when Blake was younger, our owner, when he was younger, I think um Rick might have been one of his parents. Oh yeah. Uh-huh.

Karlene Masse:

I think Rick should be a Chapman brother by a surprise.

Gail Langner:

You're probably right. So, Karlene, once the kids go into foster care, is the is the goal to get them back to their parents, but sometimes you don't want to put them back in that situation, right? I mean, that's that's kind of an interesting call. Um, what happens there?

Karlene Masse:

Yeah, so um that's a great question. A lot of times um there's a big kind of misconception of the difference between adoption and fostering. So the purpose of foster care is that you have the child for a certain amount of time because the intention is to reunify them with their families. So there is a time frame that is given from the caseworkers to the parents, um, and and the biological parents, depending on their circumstance, they'll have a certain amount of time to get their lives back in order, whether it's rehabilitation, whether it's finding a job, whatever the case may be for their their story, um, they are going to have a that certain amount of time. Um it could be anywhere from a year, it could be anywhere from 18 months, sometimes it's court order, so every circumstance is different. If by the time that the system or the government has allotted for that parent to, you know, get back on track, if they're not at that point, then um that's when the case will turn into an adoption situation, um, in which case that foster family can determine whether they want to go into the adoption world, or at that point, then DCF will work alongside 4Kids to find a family that is looking for adoption.

Gail Langner:

During World War II, my mother uh took care of wards of the court kids that were taken away from um their families for one reason or another. And she got my sister, my dad was over in Germany. Um she got my sister when she was two weeks old. Um, she had pneumonia and she got her straight from the hospital. And uh by the time she was two, my dad uh was my dad was got in the middle of the vault, and he was in hospitals um in England and all over. And um they adopted, they ended up adopting her. So yeah, my sister that's seven years older than me was actually in that situation herself. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

This is a ball of new information every knowledge. I love it.

Gail Langner:

Oh God. Um, so I know that you you say healing instability, you know, and they're it's super powerful words. What does a healing really look like for a child that's been through that kind of trauma? I did you did you mention that you do have help, um psychological help, right?

Karlene Masse:

Yeah, yeah. So it's really crazy because if you could even kind of think about it, a child that's placed in the foster care system is two times more likely to have PTSD, the uh PTSD than a military veteran who was in college. No kidding. Yeah. Um Karlene. So healing is truly what differentiates our organization from others. Um, we have what we offer is epic um uh therapy, which Epic stands for emotional, physical, intellectual, and character-based needs. And it is trauma, it's a trauma-informed approach that all of our therapists have. Um and really what we do, it's at no cost, typically at no cost to the parents or to the families. Um, and we offer these services for the entire family. So whether you're a biological child, whether you are the foster child or the parents, because you need to know parents need to have the right tools and resources to understand, okay, this is a type of trauma that they're going through, whether it's abandonment, whether it's sexual abuse, whatever the case may be, um, you know, they have to have the right tools necessary to navigate that child. And really the ultimate healing that we work with is, you know, through the love of Jesus. So that's why we we really preface on having a Christian home because we know that all the healing that we need is really comes from God. But our therapists are trained in that. Um, epic training is our our therapies are also um open to the public. Uh, so if we have if the therapists have capacities and you're maybe your child didn't go through the foster care system, but they have um shown signs of some type of trauma or behavioral, uh, we can go ahead and help the the parents as well from from our community. So it really just depends on you know the capacity for the therapist. We're actually in the process of hiring our third therapist for the office, which is fantastic because that means that we have more families to help uh to help you know get them back together.

Gail Langner:

About how many foster families do you have right now um in your in our area?

Karlene Masse:

So within 4Kids, um, we have currently 28 families. We have yeah, we have in four years, which is amazing. We have 15 more that are in the process of getting licensed. And we have, I believe it's five or six families that are currently in their enroll currently in our uh training that we have right now, pride training is what we call it. Okay. So they have they started back in the beginning of October and they're gonna graduate in December. So that's really cool. It's a six-four. That's great.

Gail Langner:

That's great. Well, Karlene, I know um not everybody can be a foster parent, but what are some other ways to support?

Karlene Masse:

There's so many ways. I mean, let me count the ways. And this is one of the reasons why I love this organization because there are just really creative ways to just plug in with us. Um, obviously, the first and foremost is if you have the heart or you ever thought about fostering or becoming a foster parent, that's always going to be our first one is trying to find more homes for these children. Um, but really for individuals who desire to want to plug in and it's not through the becoming a foster parent, um, we do offer have donors, individual donors that we have. 70% of our organization is funded privately. So we actually only get about 30% of grants coming through the state for what we do. Uh so we rely heavily on individual donors for businesses. If you're looking to just become a sponsor, we have three fundraising events throughout the year and three foster care events throughout the year. So all of that goes back to um to really helping these parents and these children to kind of get on board. Um, if you're not in that position to do that as well, you know, we have a volunteer staff that we have here, which we call FAM, which is our family advocacy ministry. And really what they are, and it's the reason why our um stability rate within a foster care home, a 4Kids foster care home is so great and the government loves it, is because we have this ministry where they're just volunteers that say, Hey, let's give you a night off, family. Go and enjoy date night, go and um, you know, just remember who you were before you took on this mission and we're gonna come in and babysit the child. Or, you know, hey, you need some uh meal train going on, you know. I know that this is busy, this transition, you have three kids, or you have one of your own kids, however, you know, it's let me give you some meals. So, you know, it's a wraparound system that truly helps. And then and our families feel that support coming from our volunteers. So, you know, talents, treasures, those are always the things that we look at. Um, and then obviously if you're if you're looking to just become a donor individually, we have a wonderful depend uh defenders program. So at a dollar a day, you could become a defender and you'll be part of our our bigger donation of fundraising campaigns that we have, and you'll get to hear all the fun stuff that that your dollar a day is going towards.

Gail Langner:

That would be really neat. And of course, obviously, small small businesses too.

Karlene Masse:

You brought up you brought up companies as well that can sponsor and they could be individual donors as well or donors as well through our own state program. We just had a um a business out in Label that just uh this past week became a monthly donor, and um it's five thousand dollars a month that he's donated. Karlene Oh, yeah, that's wonderful. It was a huge win, and I'm so happy for it. Doesn't mean that everybody has to do that. We really just require a dollar a day.

Gail Langner:

That's that's a lot, that's a lot. Yes. If you're counting on me for that, Karlene, you can just not count on that.

Karlene Masse:

No, you give so much already. It's not a state for uh state insurance. Hey, you guys give so much with your time, um, being one of our champions. You know that Blake is one of our champions, which is like our little mini board here for Southwest Florida. And yeah, we just recently joined our uh events committees team with Galantines and everything. So I'm excited about that. But I know businesses can plug in through uh through sponsorships, you know. Um, there's completely different ways. I mean, another way to also uh plug in is hosting a donor event. So you have a sphere of influence and you know you have people that are, you know, this cause could be near and dear to them. Let's get them together in a room and talk more about how they could plug in. Awesome.

Gail Langner:

Well, I am so glad you took the time, Karlene, to be here today. Just before we close, tell them how would they reach you if if one of our listeners went, Oh, I I really would like to be involved in that some way. How would they get in touch with you?

Karlene Masse:

Absolutely. So 4Kids.us, uh, and then you put our location for Southwest Florida is going to be your main way. You'll get to know more information, but you could also reach me um directly at 239-483-8533. Or you could just email me KarleneM@ 4Kids.us. And that's M as a Masse, not as a nasty.

Gail Langner:

And and Karlene with a K.

Karlene Masse:

Yes, Karlene with a K. That's right.

Gail Langner:

Right. Well, thanks for for taking some time, my friend. You know how much I appreciate you and how much uh we all appreciate 4kids and everything that you do. Um, it is um it's a wonderful ministry besides just being a job. It's a wonderful ministry. And so um we're thrilled to help in any way we can and um obviously look forward to seeing you at our Hats Off to You event coming up. And yeah, so anyway, thanks for taking the time and uh and again, thanks for all you do.

Karlene Masse:

Thank you for everything that you guys are doing. We're so proud to be partners with you, and we're excited to see what state insurance is going to do in 2026. I know you guys are just gonna continue to be blessed things and blessed because of everything that you do for our community. So thank you so much for that. Oh, thank you.

Gail Langner:

Well, have a great day. You too.

Intro/Close:

Thank you for joining us on State Insurance USA Care. We hope today's story uplifted and inspired you. If you'd like to support or learn more about the incredible work happening in your community, visit StateInsuranceUSA.com or call 239 567 9992. You can also visit CaboWabojim.com. Until next time, be sure to let your son shine and keep carrying good and positive vibes wherever the winds take you.