Grace Epperly, development coordinator for Wesley House Family Services, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM yesterday morning to talk about the organization.
Wesley House had a gala event recently and the evening got rave reviews.
Epperly said, “We had our Key West black tie benefit on Saturday, March 29 at the beautiful Beachside Resort and Residences, and we honored Mayor Denise Henriquez. It was a really, really beautiful night. Everybody was dressed to the nines, and we had DJ Cardi. So that’s always a fun time when people get on the dance floor and rock it out. We just are so grateful for our sponsors and all of the people that attended and donated and bid on our live auction items. So we definitely consider it a success, and we’re excited about it. Thank you to the community for their continued support, and please save the date for March 28, 2026.”
Wesley House works to help families and children.
Epperly said, “Wesley House is the child welfare agency in the Florida Keys. We handle all of the foster care placement for Monroe County. We also license foster parents. We have adoption services for children in foster care who cannot be reunited with their families. We have a preventions program, which is strengthening families, that’s for people who are at risk, and we work with them on a short term basis, addressing any issues that brought them to the attention of the Department of Children and Families, and then connecting them with other community resources to prevent them from having their children brought into foster care. Then we have our Healthy Families Program, Healthy Families Monroe, that’s a free, voluntary program. It’s open to anyone who is pregnant or their children are three months or less. It’s a great program that we have family support workers that are family support specialists, that work with the families up until that child is age five. It’s wonderful, full of resources about parenting tips, what to look for with developmental stages with your children. It’s just a great, great resource, a great way to meet other families in the community and connect. Then in Key West, we have our preschool, which is the Inez Martin Child Development Center and that serves ages two to five. It’s a wonderful school.”
April is Child Abuse Prevention Month.
Epperly said, “It’s always good to bring awareness to a particular topic. So what we do during this time is on our social media, we are highlighting some ways that you can support families, things to look for. So child abuse is considered intentional harm or mistreatment to a child under 18 years old. It can include physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse and neglect. Neglect is something that people may or may not be aware of. There’s leaving a child that’s way too young at home by themselves without proper supervision. There’s also medical neglect, where a parent is not keeping up with their child’s doctor appointments, or not taking them to the doctor when it’s necessary. So those are things to look for. One of our great resources is the school system. The teachers always have an extra eye on the kids. So that’s one of the things that we greatly appreciate, but it’s also members of the community that can keep an eye out for us as well. If you ever suspect child abuse or neglect is going on, the national hotline is 1-800-96-ABUSE and that’s for child and elderly abuse, and it’s manned 24 hours a day, seven days a week, o and it’s also a anonymous, so you can call and then what happens is the Department of Children and Families will investigate that allegation, and if they determine that it is severe, then they will contact Wesley House, and then it goes either through to our preventions program, where it’s going to be a short term thing, or it’s going to be to the full case management, where the children are going to be removed and go into foster care. So we ask our community just to keep an eye out, of course, if somebody’s in immediate danger, please call 911, and the police will come right away, and then it’ll go to the Department of Children and Families from there. But it takes a community effort to prevent child abuse.”
If a family is struggling, before it gets to the need for foster care, Wesley House can help.
Epperly said, “What we can do as a community is offer assistance. So if you see your neighbor struggling with some kids or something like that, and they’re just kind of having a hard time, offer to cook them some dinner, offer to help run some errands for them. So a little bit of extra help in small ways can add up to big things and what’s really important, especially when kids are all ages, I would say, is having that bond with their parents, spending time with their parents. So if a parent can spend a little extra time with their kids, rather than running some errands somewhere or doing something, offer to help out. So those are just small ways that people can help. Get to know your neighbors, get to know your neighbors with the kids, and that way you kind of then become aware of what’s their schedule, and then you would know what might be off about something going on. Let’s all work together as a community and collectively, we can make our community stronger.”
Members in Motion is coming up in Key Largo.
Epperly said, “We are hosting the Key Largo Chamber Members in Motion event, which is an after hours networking event next Thursday the 24th from 5:30 to 7:30 at our new Key Largo office. So if you’d like to attend, please go to the Key Largo chamber website and register, and we’d love to have you stop by and take a tour of the new facility. We appreciate the community support.”