Safe Children Coalition, 1500 Independence Blvd #210, Sarasota, 941-371-4799. https://sccfl.org/

In the July/August 2022 edition of SRQ Magazine, we interviewed Brena Slater, Safe Children Coalition President and Chief Executive Officer as part of our In Conversation feature about nonprofit leaders. Below is an excerpt published in the magazine in which Slater shares her insights with SRQ readers on community growth and changes.

We still have an opiate epidemic but I bet there are a lot of people who think it's over because they haven't heard those words in three years.

Substance abuse is the number one issue for the reason why children are removed in both Sarasota and Manatee counties. And we still have death cases. So we have children who were brought in because their parents overdosed and passed away--we still have a parent pass away monthly, if not more than once a month. And this is just a small subset. These are just the kids who we have in our system of care. I think the reason you probably don't hear about it as much is because Narcan is so available. So when parents are overdosing or even children, either EMS or law enforcement or the hospital Narcan them. So really they bring them back and then they unfortunately a lot of times don't get the treatment they need and go out and use again. So I will say that substance abuse is still the number one issue why children are removed and more than half the children that are removed are zero to five. It’s these vulnerable children with substance abusing parents that are still the largest issue within our child welfare system of the community.

Safe Children Coalition, 1500 Independence Blvd #210, Sarasota, 941-371-4799. https://sccfl.org/

To read the full article, click here.