Our History

Lawton Chiles, who served as Florida’s Governor from 1991 through 1998, focused a major part of his administration on building a state that was committed to insuring the healthy development of all children. His wife, Rhea Chiles, created The Lawton Chiles Foundation to continue the Governor’s commitment to children by assisting communities to become Whole Child Communities.  Bob and Maria Seemer of Rockledge, Florida, and founders of ets,inc., and John Cowan, designed and developed the "Whole Child Connection," web-based technology that enables families to identify, and connect to, the services they need.
The Whole Child Project is not another program, but a philosophy that uses ets connections tools including strategic planning, web-based technology, and performance measurement, and broad-based community engagement to build communities where everyone works together to make sure children thrive.

The Governor understood that successful nurturing and development of all children required a dramatically new approach. An approach that:

• Starts early—before conception.
• Provides continuous support to parents.
• Is grounded in the family.
• Is holistic, considering the physical, economic, social, cultural and spiritual environment in which the child lives.
• Creates a “no wrong door” culture whereby service providers are committed to building collaborative service delivery networks instead of competitive, single strategy agencies and institutions.
• Builds a partnership across all sectors of our society whose activities impinge on the lives of children.
• Allocates state funding to ensure fairness, equity, and consistent outcomes.

More About Whole Child Brevard

Under the leadership of Brevard's Leadership Roundtable, Brevard County applied to the Lawton Chiles Foundation and was designated a Whole Child community in July 2009. Since then, an incredible cross-section of Brevard County residents, representing educators, medical providers, the faith community, business owners, parent and child advocates, and community volunteers continue to confirm this community’s commitment to children, gather data on critical indicators relating to children’s wellbeing, and agree on a series of priority action steps to improve the outcomes for all of our children.  As a result of this broad-based support and interest, the Whole Child Connection in Brevard was expanded to address the needs of both children and adults.

Whole Child Brevard is a communitywide effort to get our children off to the best start in life by ensuring they have everything they need to thrive. Families raising children often need help: some lack education, information or economic stability, or they may not know where to go for help. Even busy, two-parent, working families may struggle due to a lack of time, information or adequate child care. Other families are strained by the many demands of raising children or caring for a child with special physical or emotional needs.

We cannot leave it to government or human service agencies alone to meet the needs of families. Whole Child Brevard seeks to engage the entire community in a commitment to our young residents because we recognize their future – and ours – hinges on ensuring the best start for every child.

A growing body of research shows that the first five years of life are crucial to brain development, to acquiring social skills necessary to grow into good citizens, and to developing emotional strength and physical and mental health. As children grow through adolescence, basic needs must continue to be met so that they can succeed, not only in school, but in life toward self-sufficiency and independence.  

Individually, many agencies and organizations serve one dimension of children’s wellbeing, from immunizations to early learning programs. Embracing the idea that we must nurture the Whole Child requires the entire community working together. A child who is fully immunized but spends the day without stimulating educational experiences will not realize his or her full potential. Similarly, a child who has quality child care, but an unsafe home environment may never become all she could be. Ultimately, our community will pay the price for failing to fully nurture the treasure that is our children.