Four-month-old Emma was dressed in a pink onesie with a heart on it when her mother awoke to find her dead.

It was the second time in two years that Nicole Iannone had found one of her children dead after falling asleep with the baby, according to police reports. She had lost a baby boy after sharing a bed with him in Philadelphia, police found.

Just a few days after Emma’s death in January, Gulfport police arrested Iannone on a manslaughter charge.

But in May, prosecutors decided not to file charges. A medical examiner’s report detected that the child had a gene abnormality linked to heart problems and was unable to determine her cause of death.

U.S. public health officials discourage bed sharing between parents and infants, saying that babies should sleep on their backs in a crib with only a fitted sheet, free of materials that could suffocate them. Parent and child should share a room, but not a bed, for at least the first six months, they advise.

Still, some parents choose to disregard the advice. The practice has even gained traction in some corners of social media. Some researchers argue it can be done safely.

Criminal investigations can prove murky. In the United States, nearly 75% of unexpected infant deaths in 2020 were classified as sudden infant death syndrome or an undetermined cause of death.

Connie Shingledecker, chairperson of Florida’s Child Abuse Death Review Team, trains police and medical examiners to investigate these deaths. A retired major at the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office, Shingledecker advises law enforcement officers to gather as much information as possible before making an arrest.

“In that respect, you’ll feel that you have the best information,” she said. “And then you make a decision.”

“THEY DON’T KNOW”

Iannone told her fiance, Jack Gough, that she had always wanted to be a mom.

He worked two jobs to support the family. Iannone took on the majority of child care as a stay-at-home mom, according to a Gulfport police report.

The couple had moved to Florida to be closer to Iannone’s family. Police reports recorded their housing status as “transient.”

The couple’s first child, Ryder, died after Iannone took him into her bed and fell asleep. The 2-month-old boy was wearing an over-the-counter heart monitor, and Iannone woke up when it started going off. The baby had blood coming from his nose and his heart wasn’t beating, according to a hospital report.

On her first birthday after her son’s death, Iannone raised money for the American SIDS Institute in memory of her son.

Neither Iannone nor Gough could be reached for comment in recent weeks at phone numbers or addresses listed under their names in public records.

Though some health officials had warned Iannone about co-sleeping and the couple had resolved at times not to co-sleep, Iannone told police she had seen information on social media promoting bed sharing.

She also told police that she hadn’t been told what caused Ryder’s death, and that she had been told he had died of sudden infant death syndrome. She asked if testing could be done on Emma because she wanted to know of health problems that could be passed on if she had other kids.

Yet her sleeping arrangements presented hazards flagged even by some researchers who champion bed sharing: The bed was wedged against a wall, where an infant can get stuck, and Emma was bottle-fed instead of breastfed, a risk factor that can make co-sleeping more dangerous, as researchers believe breastfeeding moms are more attuned to their baby’s movements throughout the night.

The Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner’s Office had not completed its autopsy of Emma, but Iannone told officers she intended to move back to Pennsylvania. They arrested her before she could leave.

“Because she only recently moved to Florida from Pennsylvania, and didn’t have ties here, the likelihood of her fleeing prosecution was great,” Sgt. Thomas Woodman said in an email. “Based on the totality of our investigation, we had probable cause for her arrest and didn’t require the autopsy report to develop probable cause.”

When the Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner’s Office released its report, however, the case became more complicated. Genetic testing on Emma found that the child had an abnormality on a gene that has been linked to heart problems. As a result, the office couldn’t determine the cause and manner of the infant’s death.

That prompted prosecutors to drop the case without filing charges, according to Assistant State Attorney Christie Ellis.

While researchers were able to determine that Emma had a genetic abnormality, it’s hard to say whether it would have caused or contributed to the infant’s death. Mutations in this specific gene have been linked to atrial fibrillation and may also be connected to other heart problems. Still, not all genetic abnormalities cause health issues, according to Christopher Snyder, a pediatric cardiologist who reviewed the report for the Tampa Bay Times.

“They don’t know whether it causes lone atrial fibrillation or something else or potentially nothing,” Snyder said.

SAFE SLEEP PRACTICES

Though the medical examiner’s office could not determine the child’s cause of death, they did not categorize it as sudden infant death syndrome.

That’s because Pinellas-Pasco medical examiners stopped classifying infant deaths this way in 2000. They found that many of the deaths were caused by suffocation in unsafe sleeping situations. They believed that sudden infant death syndrome confused parents, making them think that the children died of unknown causes, rather than preventable factors, such as unsafe sleeping situations.

Still, sometimes the office classifies a death as undetermined when there isn’t enough information to identify a singular cause of death, as was the case here, said Bill Pellan, director of investigations for the medical examiner’s office.

Many infant sleep deaths are caused by asphyxiation and unsafe sleeping situations, Pellan said.

While American health officials discourage bed sharing, those in the United Kingdom have focused on ways to make it safer.

Some U.S. researchers have also found that there are ways to bed share safely, including James McKenna, a professor at Santa Clara University and professor emeritus at the University of Notre Dame. McKenna has spent about 40 years studying the connections between infant sleep, breastfeeding and unexpected infant sleep deaths.

Safe sleeping starts before the baby is born, McKenna said. Parents who smoked during pregnancy, for instance, should not bed share because it increases the risk of the baby dying in their sleep.

Parents also should not bed share if intoxicated or taking medication that would make them drowsy. They should also keep the child away from pillows, stuffed animals and soft bedding.

And they should never sleep on a sofa or couch with their infant.

“Just like you arrange a safe crib environment for your baby, there’s a way to arrange a safe bed-sharing environment for a baby,” McKenna said.

CONDUCTING AND INVESTIGATION

Investigating infant deaths can be difficult for police, who must balance their responsibilities with sensitivity to grieving parents.

Determining criminal culpability in these cases can be difficult, and at times, controversial. When a Wisconsin state representative crafted a bill that would criminalize intoxicated parents who share a bed with their child, it was criticized by some who said the state should instead focus on prevention by addressing poverty, mental health and substance abuse. That bill ultimately failed to pass in two different sessions.

Such laws are also not always applied evenly. Dorothy Roberts, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, has studied the criminalization of mothers, in particular Black women who used drugs while pregnant. When mothers are prosecuted for harm to a child, women of color and low-income white women are more likely to face legal consequences, she said.

“Punishing mothers — marginalized mothers — has long been a way of diverting attention from the real harms to children and the kinds of radical changes we would need to truly support children and keep them safe,” she said.

When Shingledecker, the retired Manatee County Sheriff’s Office major, first began her career in the 1970s, police were told not to “retraumatize” parents by asking too many questions during investigations into infant deaths.

“I think, unfortunately, that during that time period, the lack of thorough investigation … probably led to untold numbers of child homicide cases that we’ll never know,” Shingledecker said, noting high–profile cases where moms smothered their babies.

Shingledecker teaches police how to use doll reenactments to learn more about how the child died, having parents show officers how the child was positioned and where they were, both after they went to sleep and after they were found dead.

“I tell these detectives … the most important thing that you’re doing right now is helping us by gathering as much information so we can prevent future death,” she said.

Read the article as originally published at https://www.tampabay.com/news/breaking-news/2023/08/05/bed-sharing-cosleeping-baby-dangers-warnings/

One in five children in Pinellas County do not have enough nutritious food for an active, healthy life. The Juvenile Welfare Board, in a partnership with the St. Petersburg Free Clinic, are working to change that.

JWB’s Board has invested in bulk food purchases and a centralized hub with the St. Petersburg Free Clinic. In turn, the Free Clinic orchestrates the distribution of food to dozens of partner sites, feeding children and families countywide.

“Last year, JWB led the charge in SPFC’s ability to distribute more than 20.4 million pounds of food throughout Pinellas County, serving 1.2 million individuals in 2022 alone,” said Jennifer Yeagley, the Free Clinic’s CEO. “They do this through distributing food to partner food pantries, churches, other nonprofit organizations, neighborhood family centers, and even preschools.”

On average, the Free Clinic serves more than 135,000 individuals a month across Pinellas County, a 51% increase year over year.

This is achieved thanks to dozens of food partners across the county, like Dunedin Cares and FEAST.

The Free Clinic also coordinates JWB’s funded food program, distributing pre-packaged meals to kids at schools, NFCs, and after school programs and filling food gaps during weekends and summers…to the tune of 200,000 meals last year.

Read the article as originally published at https://www.tbnweekly.com/pinellas_county/article_e0b4dce6-307c-11ee-9f51-fb6c4f194a66.html

Spreading the joy of reading to kids in Pinellas County is the mission of The Summer Book Bus.

There’s something joyous about seeing kids who are excited to read. Children at Northside Boys & Girls Club in St. Petersburg are all excited about their new books. They got the books for free from the Summer Book Bus. 

The Book Bus is a partnership between the Juvenile Welfare Board and Pinellas County Schools. The goal of the program is to keep kids engaged in learning during the summer months when they are out of school. 

“When they start the school year. It’ll take a couple of months for them to pick up where they left off the last year,” said Joanna Maniscalco, Community Collaboration Coordinator for Juvenile Welfare Board of Pinellas County. “If they’re doing reading, if they’re in these programs, if they’re doing the different things during the summer that allows that the new teacher will be able to pick up from where they left off the last year.” 

The bus makes about 70 stops each summer throughout Pinellas County, giving away free books. It’s been going on for seven years.

“We’ve seen about 27,000 kids, and we’ve given out about 55,000 books throughout Pinellas from St. Pete all the way up to Tarpon,” Maniscalco shared. “They’re not going to be collecting dust on a bookshelf if kids pick their own books. They are so much more likely to read the book.” 

Maniscalco said just maybe one book in the hands of a child will make all the difference in the years to come. 

Read the article and view the news segment at https://www.fox13news.com/news/book-bus-helping-kids-read-throughout-pinellas-county

“We’re recovering, but we’re recovering slowly,” said Lee Bryant, PCTA President.

Bryant is the new president of the Pinellas Classroom Teachers Association, but this is his first year outside of the classroom after teaching high school for 28 years.

He saw firsthand how the COVID-19 pandemic affected teachers and students.

“I had no idea how to teach on Teams. Then we went away for Spring Break, and they said, ‘you’re not coming back.’ And I was like, ok, let’s figure this out. So there was a loss on the part of the teachers,” said Bryant.

He said learning loss wasn’t created by the pandemic but made it much worse.

“Learning loss has been a problem in the inner city, in poor areas, in places where there are parents who have two or three jobs quite often where they are not able to interact with their children. And it got amplified with the pandemic,” said Bryant.

“I think the pandemic presented a lot of challenges for students who were struggling to stay engaged and continue learning and making progress,” said Karen Boggess, JWB’s Chief Program Officer.

Newly released statewide test scores from the Florida Department of Education show that 50% of students in 3rd-10th grade tested on grade level or above in English Language Arts.

While 56% of 3rd-8th graders tested on grade level or above in math.

School officials said this shows that they are making improvements from pandemic-era learning, but not enough.

“And it still hasn’t caught up,” said Bryant.

Groups like the Juvenile Welfare Board of Pinellas County have been working around the clock through different programs to make sure students are catching up.

“It is extremely critical and important because we want all children in Pinellas to be successful and to be academically on track,” said Boggess.

As the start of the new school year looms, teachers want students and families to start getting ready now, fearing the summer slide will make it that much more difficult to learn when students return.

“Having children read on a regular basis every single day so they don’t get out of that pattern,” said Boggess.

They recommend dedicating about 30 minutes or more to reading every day to make the transition easier when school starts.

“They need to start preparing themselves by doing some of the mental gymnastics it will take when they go into school,” said Bryant.

“As parents get back into a structure with our kids, having them go to bed in a timely manner so that they are ready to go to school is also important,” said Boggess.

Read the article and watch the news segment with on-camera interviews at https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/region-pinellas/students-continue-to-battle-learning-loss-teachers-encourage-them-to-start-preparing-for-the-school-year-now

The Summer Book Bus is on the road in Pinellas County, working to combat learning loss through free books.

The bus makes an average of 70 stops across the county every summer and gives away nearly 10,000 free books in underserved neighborhoods.

“If a child is to pick their own book, they’re more likely to love it, enjoy it and read it,” said Joanna Maniscalco with the Juvenile Welfare Board.

The stops include libraries, communication recreation centers, family centers, childcare centers, schools and more.

Kids are invited onto the bus to pick two books to take home.

The bus is sponsored by the Juvenile Welfare Board in partnership with the school district. It’s part of JWB’s Early Readers, Future Leaders Grade-Level Reading Campaign.

The mission is to help curb summer slide, but this year there’s an extra need to get books to children who just graduated 3rd grade–those that were in kindergarten when the pandemic hit.

“Their last quarter of kindergarten, that’s when they ended up going home, basically, and not really having much schooling for nine weeks, and that really is when most of our kindergartners become readers,” explained Melissa Babanats, Principal of Lewis Elementary School in Hillsborough County.

While last years grades won’t be released until the fall in Florida, she said they’ve seen the rough numbers.

“We definitely saw a decline in our third grade this year, without a doubt,” Babanats said.

While the book bus will end soon, educators said parents and family members can help with reading loss.

“Read, read read. So one of the things I mean, as a parent myself, you know, no matter what your kids are reading have them read… from cereal boxes, to comic strips, it’s that whole practice makes perfect,” Babanats exclaimed.

See the remaining stops at https://www.jwbpinellas.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/2023-JWB-Summer-Book-Bus-Schedule.pdf

Read the UPDATED article and view the news segment with on-camera interviews at https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/region-pinellas/summer-book-bus-delivers-thousands-of-free-books-across-pinellas-county

The Summer Book Bus is on the road in Pinellas County, working to combat learning loss through free books.

The bus makes an average of 70 stops across the county every summer and gives away nearly 10,000 free books in underserved neighborhoods.

The stops include libraries, communication recreation centers, family centers, childcare centers, schools and more.

Kids are invited onto the bus to pick two books to take home.

The bus is sponsored by the Juvenile Welfare Board in partnership with the school district. It’s part of JWB’s Early Readers, Future Leaders Grade-Level Reading Campaign.

See the remaining stops at https://www.jwbpinellas.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/2023-JWB-Summer-Book-Bus-Schedule.pdf

Read the article as originally published at https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/region-pinellas/summer-book-bus-delivers-thousands-of-free-books-across-pinellas-county

Some Tampa Bay parents are struggling to not only find child care but also afford the cost as it outpaces the price of housing for some families, according to a report by Child Care Aware of America.

“We got kicked off the waitlist for three different home daycares before Ellowynne was even born, so yes, very stressful part of my unplanned pregnancy,” said Pinellas County mother Morgan Nelson. “I was on six different waiting lists of the only six places I could find that would take zero to one (year old.) I had no idea how I was going to go back to work at all.”

Nelson said she kept calling the learning center next to her work in Clearwater that had a capped closed waitlist of 45 families. She eventually got in.

“I am beyond thankful every day that I dropped my daughter off there because it is just literally the only solution,” she exclaimed. But that solution is still $385 a week.

According to Child Care Aware of America (CCAoA), the cost of child care in the U.S. averaged about $11,000 a year in 2022. That’s 10% of a married couple’s salary and 33% of a single parent’s salary for one child.

Nelson’s yearly bill is closer to $20,000.

CCAoA also found the price of care for two children exceeded average housing costs in the Midwest, the Northeast and the South. It also exceeds annual in-state tuition across the country.

With people moving to Tampa Bay at record rates, the rise in the cost of child care is a reflection of demand and inflation. The Early Learning Center of Pinellas County adds that many centers are also short-staffed and have to leave children on the waitlist.

The childcare crisis is why it’s a day of celebration in St. Petersburg at the grand opening of the newly renovated Happy Workers R’club Early Learning Academy, now big enough for nearly 150 children with eligibility for scholarships.

“We received $350,000 from the legislature. We have received donations from private funders, and we have received Juvenile Welfare Board funding as well,” said Debra Ballinger, Executive Director R’Club Child Care.

The early education center’s focus is on ages zero to five, with emphasis on two months to three years old.

“One of the greatest needs is for the Zero to Three population,” Ballinger explained. “We find that families are desperately seeking quality education for their younger children and the costs that’s involved with zero to three with the lower ratios and all of the mandates sometimes is very prohibiting for certain families.”

St Petersburg mother Brittany Dillard has three children enrolled at the Happy Day R’Club center.

“Having childcare… is honestly on the same level as having a mortgage,” she exclaimed. “Having your children in school and especially in a place like happy workers where they can receive a quality education, you know that they’re being educated for the amount that you’re paying is definitely a really big deal.”

“Eighty percent of the brain is developed in the first three years and yet there are not enough high-quality early learning institutions in places in Pinellas County or elsewhere,” said Beth Houghton, CEO/Juvenile Welfare Board of Pinellas County. “So our funding is about a million dollars towards this project on an annual basis not just to assure that it is here and it provides the care that you would find in other places, but that it is a higher level of care.”

The Florida legislature recently approved an additional million dollars into the state’s school readiness program to help parents afford child care, but most working families don’t qualify.

“The Early Learning Center of Pinellas County has partnered with the Juvenile Welfare Board to create an additional expanded scholarship program to help some of those families to start meeting those needs and reach, but there’s more that needs to be done,” said Lindsay Carson, with the Early Learning Coalition of Pinellas County.

The Economic Policy Institute recommends state childcare reform that caps families’ childcare expenses at 7% of their income.

They said this would, in turn, allow more than 75,000 parents to enter the labor force and generate $7.6 billion for the economy.

“The Child Care and Development Block Grant Act (CCDBG) is a law that authorizes the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) program. CCDF is administered by states, territories and tribes and outlines how federal funds will be used to provide financial assistance to low-income families to access child care. This hub page provides information on CCDBG and the CCDF state plans, which states are currently in the process of developing for years 2022-2024.”

Read more about the block grant plan here.

View the article, with video interviews–including JWB CEO Beth A. Houghton–as originally published at https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/in-depth/most-families-now-pay-more-for-child-care-than-housing