Leadership Team

Message from Lorita Shirley, Executive Director

Eckerd Community Alternatives would like to thank you for the opportunity to serve our community’s most vulnerable children and their families, and acknowledge your support in helping give them much-needed second chances.

Eckerd believes that the child protection system should be a resource for families – not a substitute for them and that healthy, capable children come from healthy, capable families. It is because of our belief in this strongly-aligned framework that Eckerd’s system of care had another great year improving the quality of services and producing better outcomes for children and families in our community.

Tremendous progress has been made since Eckerd became the community-based care lead agency in 2008. For example, we have greatly reduced the number of children remaining in care longer than 12 months. The cost savings realized from achieving permanency for children and ensuring stability in their placements have been reinvested into prevention and diversion efforts designed to strengthen families and maintain children safely within their homes.

Despite the current economic climate and societal barriers such as unemployment, homelessness and prescription drug abuse, children are being safely reunified with their parents in a timelier manner and are being adopted at record breaking rates – instead of lingering in foster care. Success story after success story tell of foster teens finding forever families just days shy of their 18th birthday. Or parents diligently working their case plans and, with strong community support, having their children safely return home within six months.

This year, Eckerd was selected to participate in a Quality Foster Parent Initiative which resulted in a new recruitment campaign called “Be Their Champion” and an even stronger partnership with our foster parents. Now more than ever, we are one team working together to ensure safety, well-being and permanency for our children.

We still have much work to do and, as we look ahead to next year, we expect even greater things from ourselves and from our community partners…for our community’s children.

Thank you and God bless!

Lorita Shirley
Executive Director

ECA Leadership Team