How Did Children’s Trust Get Involved in Mental Health?

Children’s Trust Approves Mental Health Grants Despite Internal Turmoil: 

As the New World Believers’ scandal widens, several readers have asked how the Escambia Children’s Trust ever approved the grants for informal mental health programs. It took some time, but I found the video of the Trust’s board meeting on Sept. 12, 2023.

• Background: New World Believers founder Rodney Jones and three of his children have been arrested. Jones has been charged with sexual battery of a minor, who participated in the NWB H.O.O.P.S. program that the Trust has funded for two years to the tune of $900K. NWB CEO Romeo Jones, mental health counselor Rodrico Jones and Selina Jones, who doesn’t work for NWB, were arrested for obstructing justice.

In September 2023, the Trust Board was dealing with the sudden resignation of its first executive director, Tammy Greer, and its audit firm quit.

After a lengthy debate during which Commissioner Lumon May tried to table the proposal, the Board approved  $2,046,046.80 in grants to five organizations—Boys & Girls Club of the Emerald Coast, Lamplighter Academic & Mentoring Program, New World Believers, Twin Oaks Juvenile Development and Youths Left Behind—providing mental health services to children and youth in targeted Escambia County zip codes.

Staff Transitions Cloud Grant Approval Process

The grant recommendations arrived at the board amid another staffing change. Grant and Program Director Dr. Kim Krupa announced her resignation during the meeting, though she offered to remain in an interim capacity to manage the transition.

• “My communication to Ms. Abrams is that I would like to step down, but that I am willing to serve at the interim,” Dr. Krupa told the board. “So the specific tasks I would be working on are the monitoring the contract reports that are due December 31st for 24 current contracts, and then standing up these five contracts.”

The staffing situation extended beyond Dr. Krupa’s position. Commissioner Lumon May noted the organization had lost its executive director, compliance person, and auditor—raising concerns about the Trust’s stability.

May made a motion to table the grant awards until the Children’s Trust could stabilize its staffing situation.

“I certainly don’t believe in continuing to pile things on top of things, that we’re going to have to have a new executive director. We’re going to have to have someone to replace Kim. We’re going to have to have a new auditor,” May said. “And so although the mental health of our children is critical to me, I would not vote to not approve any of these, but I certainly would support tabling these until we stabilize our staff and stabilize our auditor position because we have a responsibility of stewardship.”

May added he wasn’t opposing the grants themselves: “And if I was the average citizen now with an auditor leaving, with no excuse, without an executive director, without your compliance person, as a citizen, I couldn’t in good faith, Madam Chair, say that this organization is stable.”

Focus on Informal Mental Health Supports

Krupa defended approved grants for informal mental health supports rather than traditional counseling services—a distinction that sparked discussion among board members.

• Dr. Krupa explained the rationale: “It’s all about community advisors, peers, mentors, faith community. So like that connective tissue and building supports within the most vulnerable communities in Commissioner May’s district and also in Century, although we didn’t have any highly ranked proposals from Century.”

She noted that only about 20% of youth consult formal mental health supports, and the system often becomes one of last resort. Krupa said, “The purpose of this was informal supports to build mental health capacities, mental health first aid within our most vulnerable communities outside of the formal system.”

Barbershops?

Board member David Peaden questioned whether services like haircuts constituted mental health services—a point that prompted passionate responses from other board members.

Board Chair Tori Woods defended the holistic approach to mental health, particularly the role of barbershops as mentoring environments.

• “David, I hope maybe we can go out and you can see and engage in that as an African American COVID or not, I’m getting my hair done every two weeks. That is a no-brainer, like literally every two weeks,” Woods said. “And for example, my husband learned to cut hair, his own hair, because his mom could not take him every two weeks.”

Woods explained the broader mental health impact: “Deon says, ‘You look good, you feel good.’ And so when those kids go to school or go out in the community, like it’s important and when you’re going to the barbershop every week and every two weeks, that’s like those barbers are there to talk to you.”

She described the barbershop environment as providing male mentorship: “And if you go to barbershop on a Saturday, you’re going to be there for a couple hours. So you get to also engage with other men and a lot of those, those males don’t have that male figure. And so they get to see those men in a positive light and get that, not just the barbers, but the other men that are there to talk to them and help counsel them.”

Board member Stephanie White reinforced this perspective: “When you fix a kid up, and you give them the clothes that they can have and you fix their hair, it gives a girl or gives a boy a new self-confidence. And so that’s the mental health.”

Grant Performance Metrics

The five approved proposals scored above 96 points and include specific performance measures.

Dr. Krupa spoke on the scope and effort behind the proposals: “Madam Chair, can I say something else, please? These five proposals totaled 610 pages. They’ve worked on this since May, when we had a 30-day public comment period. Altogether, they’re serving 2,700 unduplicated children, and we have a system in place to make sure that happens through our reimbursement process.”

• Note: According to the Trust’s report on the mental programs for 2023-24, the providers had 1,834 participants—1,374 by Twin Oaks (75% of the total).

She said the Trust staff would hold the providers accountable: “We’re not writing blank checks. We are standing up organizations to make sure they do what they say they’re going to do, according to the performance measures that they submit. We ask them to be targeted in this proposal. So I certainly wouldn’t want that to be held against them.”

Dr. Krupa pushed back against any concerns about the Trust’s staff’s capacity to handle the grants: “I also wanted to point out that we have two new FTE for a total of five and our peer over at Leon only has four FTE and they’re handling 49 contracts. So I think 29 contracts are perfectly within the purview of our staff and they do have capacity to handle monitoring and compliance. And we’ve already talked about that internally.”

Board member Patty Hightower, who served on the Escambia School Board until 2024, said she was impressed by the applications. “When I read these, I was blown away by these applications. I believe that if they are successful, as they have stated in their outcomes, we will see a significant impact in our community.”

Process Questions

May expressed frustration about the grant review process, believing these proposals should have been vetted by the program committee before coming to the full board. However, Dr. Krupa clarified that wasn’t the established protocol.

“Our process is that it goes right from the board appointed review committee to the board. It doesn’t go through program committee. It was just on that agenda Friday as an FYI,” Krupa explained.

“I also have the same concerns that Commissioner May has about adding additional work on a staff that is dwindling rather than expanding because we put a hiring freeze in place, but I know the committee went through a lot of work,” said Hightower. “I know the individual groups put in a lot of effort… Since Dr. Krupa has said that she is willing to stay with us and continue the evaluation process, I feel a little better about being able to go on.”

Vote Outcomes

The motion to postpone the grant awards failed. A subsequent motion to approve all five grants passed.

Hightower stressed the urgency of addressing children’s mental health needs: “I really feel like the children in our community are hurting so much right now. I mean, during COVID, they got disconnected from each other, and our suicide rights are up, and I just feel like this is one of those areas where we need to get started yesterday rather than tomorrow.”

Hightower believed the initial grants could serve as models for expansion. “These initial grants we’re evaluating as to outcome and how successful they are so that we can promote clarity and cooperation so that they can be expanded into other areas because we know that there are areas that maybe don’t have the resources at this moment to put together a grant.”

She added: “The people that have put this here will in the future be able to either collaborate a group in that community to say, ‘Look, we’ve done this and we can help you get this started.’ And I think that’s one of the perks of all of this as well, is that we can build best practices that can be replicated.”

The grant approval represented one of the Children’s Trust’s largest investments in community-based mental health services, even as the organization works to stabilize its internal operations and address questions about equitable distribution of resources across Escambia County.

Our Coverage

We covered this meeting in September 2023. Read Escambia Children’s Trust keeps handing out money.

Twin Oaks Juvenile Development Inc. topped the providers by being awarded a grant for $1,075,474. New World Believers followed at $555,590. Lamplighters Inc. ($218,902), Boys & Girls Club of the Emerald Coast ($102,859) and Youth Left Behind Corp ($87,454.80) rounded out the recipients.

Commissioner Lumon May shared his frustrations with the Trust board on my radio show on WCOA.

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