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First 5 Honors Lake County Children’s Champions
The First 5 Lake Children’s Champions for the third quarter of 2018 are Sarah Fuchs and Pam Inman at Lower Lake High School, Wendy Gattoni and Tanya Biasotti from Healthy Start, Realtor Natalie Baker, child care provider Jacqui Joyce and teen parent advocate Jordan O’Halloran from Lake Family Resource Center.
The skills that adults need to get and keep a job, care for children, manage finances and contribute in a productive way to society are many and varied. Functioning adults must be able to focus, plan, manage distractions and adjust behavior to the demands, rules and priorities at hand - on the job or in their family. They must remember key information, follow multistep directions, resist impulsivity and persevere to achieve long-term goals.
The brain development which allows for these core capabilities to be built and strengthened throughout life occurs during the first five years of a person’s life.
A lack of supportive, responsive relationships and a safe stable environment, or the presence of chronic stressors (poverty and discrimination) and adverse childhood experiences (abuse and neglect, parental mental illness and substance abuse, or family violence) can disrupt healthy brain development in children, creating lifelong negative consequences that hamper the development of core capabilities needed in adulthood.
Since not every child begins life with the same strong foundation and because risk factors for adverse childhood experiences and chronic stress are high in Lake County, First 5 Lake wants to shine a light on those in our community who are making a positive difference in the lives of our youngest citizens and inspire others to do the same.
Each quarter in 2018, the First 5 Lake Commissioners are recognizing “Children’s Champions” in our community – people who are going above and beyond to make sure that our youngest citizens are protected, nurtured, and prioritized.
Sarah Fuchs and Pam Inman were instrumental in making sure that the Lower Lake High School evacuation center was a safe haven for those displaced by the River and Ranch Fires.
Fuchs is the LLHS athletic director and an active member of the PTO. During the evacuations, she volunteered and worked tirelessly making sure that the needs of all evacuees were met, she did this with a team of student athlete volunteers that she recruited and supervised.
Meanwhile, Inman made sure children, especially the youngest children, in the shelter had fun activities to ease their minds and help pass the time. She is the “Careers with Children” teacher at LLHS and she teaches students about child development and positive parenting along with other skills that will help them not only in their future careers, but also in life.
Wendy Gattoni and Tanya Biasotti are advocates in the Healthy Start program through Lake County Office of Education.
Gattoni works closely with the schools to prioritize the needs of the most vulnerable students and goes out of her way to help meet the needs of children after hours and on weekends.
During the River and Ranch fires she rallied other volunteers to help evacuees with their laundry. On the first night of the project she and her team stayed at the laundromat until 1 a.m. washing families’ clothing and linens to ease their stress during a difficult time.
Biasotti has been going above and beyond the call of duty her whole life and she currently volunteers on a daily basis at the schools in Konocti Unified School District. As a family advocate for Healthy Start, she took it upon herself to visit the Woodland College (Clearlake Campus) Child Development Center to inquire about any needs of the families whose young children receive care at the facility.
She was able to link many families to services that they might not have been aware of or able to access outside the K-12 school system. During the evacuations, Biasotti volunteered daily from noon to 10 p.m., checking in with families regarding any medical or dental needs that children might have.
Whenever there is a need, especially during a disaster, Natalie Baker of Konocti Realty is a person who shows up out of her deep care and concern for her community. She serves out of the kindness of her heart and love for Lake County.
During the River and Ranch fire evacuations, Baker and her equally amazing friends and family members set up pop-up canopies and tables in the parking lot of Big 5 and Tractor Supply in Clearlake and began serving hot meals to anyone who needed one.
They spent their own money on food and supplies on the first day and then the community rallied behind them and began to drop off meat, bread, vegetables and other needed items on a daily basis.
Day-after-day Baker and her team served hundreds of meals and gave away donated items to people who were not being served by the evacuation shelters, easing the burden of many families needing to feed their children while being unable to get to fire-affected workplaces.
She also serves the community by volunteering as a home visitor with Mother-Wise, helping to ease the burden of Lake County moms who experience postpartum depression or other mood disorders.
Jacqui Joyce runs a child care program in her home and is a nurturing, compassionate and hard-working care provider. Earlier this year she was nominated for an Early Childhood Educator of the Year award.
She also goes above and beyond to help meet the needs of the community. During the River and Ranch fires, Joyce drove to donor’s homes, collected items and distributed them all around the Lake to people in need, making sure that families had the basic necessities of life.
Joyce wanted to ensure that children had clothing, food, and needed comfort items to help ease their fears during the prolonged fires, and she took the initiative to do what she could to make a difference.
Jordan O’Halloran is a Children’s Champion for her work with teen and young adult parents through Lake Family Resource Center.
The work that O’Halloran does is much more than a job to her and she frequently goes out of her way to make sure that teen parents and their children have everything they need to thrive.
As many of the parents she serves are still technically children themselves, they need a different level of care and coaching than older first-time parents require. She understands this and connects them with community resources, organizes social gatherings, provides needed education and advocacy, arranges transportation, and accompanies them to appointments as needed, showing them how much she cares and assuring them of their potential.
The First 5 Lake Commissioners are honored to bring these Children’s Champions and their efforts to the attention of our Lake County friends and neighbors.
Members of the community are encouraged to nominate worthy Champions for Children in Lake County, by filling out a nomination form at: www.firstfivelake.org/childrens-champions.php .
New Champions will be selected and honored each quarter.
First 5 Lake is also recruiting applicants throughout the month of October for a vacant seat on the Commission.
Using funds derived from CA Proposition 10’s voter-mandated tax on tobacco products, the First 5 Lake County Commission funds programs and services that benefit the health and development of young children and educate parents, grandparents, caregivers and teachers about the critical role they play during a child’s first five years.
Since its inception in 2000, First 5 Lake has supported thousands of families with programs and services designed to help Lake County children grow up healthy and ready to succeed in school and life. Current First 5 Lake Commissioners are Pam Klier, Denise Pomeroy, Brock Falkenberg, Tina Scott, Crystal Markytan, Susan Jen, Carly Swatosh, and Allison Panella.
