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keysupdate/ CENTER REACHS OUT n A N I N T E R V I E W W I T H A.B. Malory, JD, MPH Guidance/Care Center area director Guy deBoer | GD e Guidance Care Center is still a little confusing to many people because it’s come through a history where some things have changed. Can you tell us about that? AB Maloy | ABM Indeed it has. e Guidance Care Center actually has a very long history in the Florida Keys, about 38 years at this point. Originally we had three founding fathers at three different site locations. Doctor Richard Matthews in the Upper Keys, Dr. David Rice in the Middle Keys, and Marsh Wolf in the Lower Keys and Key West — three separate entities providing mental health services in the Keys. About a decade ago the Upper and Lower Keys merged to become the care centers for mental health. e guidance clinic of the Middle Keys, under Dr. Rice’s tenure, stayed an independent facility and continued to grow and develop. At some point, both of those organizations became affiliated with an umbrella foundation, a notforprofit called West Care. West Care provides us with administrative and managerial support services. Essentially what happened during that period of time is West Care saw these two entities competing for the same dollars and in some instances duplicating services, so the three strong leaders of those organizations along with West Care decided to merge all three entities into one nonprofit corporation. at is the Guidance Care Center. (Ed. Note: More information at www.gcmk.org/gcmk_history.html) GD You work on many different projects GUY deBOER <strong>KONK</strong> BROADCASTING NEWS DIRECTOR 6 www.konklife.com and one of the projects that you are getting behind is Mayor Craig Cates idea for a mobile outreach unit. Tell us about that and what services will those mobile units supply? ABM Originally what happened was Mayor Cates came together with the Key West Police Department, representatives from Lower Keys Medical Center and a number of nonprofit agencies here in the Keys including AIDS Help, Guidance Care Center and Womankind to address a still unmet need in the community. ere is a kind of intractable population of folks living in the mangroves, beaches, and the population is estimated at about 200 people who are unreachable even by the excellent and good efforts of organizations like the Florida Keys Outreach Coalition. ese are just folks who, because in most instances have serious substance abuse issues or co-occurring mental health issues, are just unable to access help. e idea under Mayor Cates tenure is to do some effective outreach advocacy to get these people off the street, to get them the services they need and get them out from in front of businesses downtown and also to toughen vagrancy laws associated with this population. Our role in that is to provide case management services in the mobile unit. We are also managing the mobile unit. is entire effort has been coordinated by Southernmost Homeless Assistance League. GD Where are you getting the funding for this mobile unit? ABM It’s coming from varying sources. e mobile unit is going to be purchased, retrofitted and maintained by a very generous contribution through the Klaus/Murphy Foundation. e Sheriff’s Office has just agreed to toss in $10,000 for start-up, and we are also seeking money from the City of Key West for additional start-up funding. Initially this is an 18-month pilot project. e idea is that the funding we’re seeking right now will be one-time funding and will not be recurrent, at least in the amounts that we have requested. Continued on page 10
K E Y B U S I N E S S I N K E Y W E S T www.konklife.com 7
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