A very different environment prompted Barbara Revels to create Flagler Cares ten years ago, when she was a Flagler County commissioner. The Great Recession’s hardships were lingering for local residents, not just from a crush of foreclosures. County government’s ability to connect residents to social services was limited.
“Things were pretty tight in our community,” Revels recalled. “We would meet as an executive group and just spin ideas. And then finally, the hospital came up with some very tiny seed funding to help us try to seek out grants.” With its first tentpole community benefactor supplying $25,000, the pieces were in place to launch a vital community nonprofit.
These days Revels serves as vice president on Flagler Cares’ board of directors. It’s never stopped being a part of her life.
As the organization marks its 10th year anniversary with a Legacy of Care celebration at the Palm Coast Community Center Saturday, its no-wrong-door approach has served nearly 5,000 clients to date, including 765 last year with over $11 million in grants. Its rent, mortgage and utility programs alone have provided nearly $2 million in emergency help to keep people in their homes. It’s served 671 clients with behavioral-health services in just three years, its Coordinated Opioid Recovery (CORe) grant, in partnership with the county’s community paramedics, providing an essential bridge to recovery from substance use disorders.
The list of services and partner agencies is long and a bit on the jargon side–behavioral/mental health counseling, benefit assistance and navigation, screenings and referrals, assistance with identification, health insurance marketplace navigation, disability assistance, and so on. But a couple of stories may illustrate the reach of the organization’s human touch.
Take Emma (an assumed name). She’d been getting a care coordinator’s help with a disability claim. The coordinator discovered she needed an oxygen concentrator. Without one, she couldn’t leave the house to get a prescription for one or lead a normal life. She couldn’t afford one even if she had a prescription. She had an outstanding balance with her doctor’s office. Flagler Cares paid down her outstanding balance, got her transportation to the doctor’s office, where she got her prescription, and helped her buy the concentrator. Emma’s life fell back in place. She could leave her house. She attended her disability appointments–and her grandson’s graduation.
Not all 765 client services last year ended up that way. But the goal is for just that sort of positive outcome, making small differences as invisible to the community as they are fundamental to ensuring the community’s decency is not an abstraction.
Then there was this week’s Girls of L.I.G.H.T, which brought together two dozen teen girls to Flagler Cares’ Village for a week-long camp to foster qualities summed up by the acronym: Lead, inspire, grow, help, thrive. Along the way they got a long visit and hung out with Superintendent LaShakia Moore, they made mala bracelets with County Judge Melissa Distler, they spent part of their Law and Justice Day with Sheriff Rick Staly (they loved the 911 center and the CSI technology), they visited with Assistant State Attorneys Melissa Clark and Tara Libby, they took an excursion to the Agriculture Museum, they played, they talked, and came uo with their own community standards summing up their week’s points of light.
It takes a beacon to keep it all together and make it happen.
The Baird effect
At the heart of it all is Carrie Baird, the organization’s CEO and last year’s Palm Coast Citizen of the Year. Along with Chief Clinical Officer Jeannette Simmons (who just left to take over a key role for Halifax Health’s psychiatric services), Chief Operating Officer Rachael Gerow, and Chief Community Impact Officer Kristy Amburgey, Baird’s organizational expertise has helped maintain funding and a focus on Flagler Care’s values. (Baird’s experience in the field dates back to 1993, with 27 of those years serving the Flagler/Volusia area.)
“I was asked to come in as a consultant and work with the original group of leaders to help them develop a strategic plan for what they wanted to do moving forward,” Baird said. “It has grown significantly. We formed the nonprofit in June 2015 and it was just me as the contractor for, I think, probably at least the first couple years. Now we have seventeen employees.”
AdventHealth Palm Coast–at the time known as Florida Hospital Flagler, on whose board Revels served until last year–was one of the organizations that took an early interest in Flagler Cares. Revels also recalled the involvement of the Florida Department of Health Flagler, Flagler County Free Clinic, Flagler Schools, and the Sheriff’s Office. But the role of the region’s medical providers in those beginning stages was essential.
So was Dr. Stephen Bickel, the medical director at the Health Department, a past Humanitarian of the Year and a philanthropist who gained public prominence as a voice of realism and common sense during the Covid pandemic in weekly appearances on Flagler Broadcasting’s Free For All Friday program.
“People who are decently well off who have health insurance, have stable jobs, and stable families and stable housing,” Bickel said, “medical care can be challenging for them just in terms of getting the right providers and follow-through and things like that. But when you don’t have those ingredients or those things going for you, medical care becomes almost impossible.”
A longtime healthcare provider and champion of accessible care in Flagler County, Bickel was also an early organizer of Flagler Cares. He was also one of their most consequential benefactors. In 2022 he pledged $10 million to Flagler Cares over ten years, a figure which has been reduced after Bickel relocated to Memphis and thus has less hands-on involvement. Neither he nor Baird would say by how much.
According to Baird, annual meetings with Bickel are in place to determine the status and usage of his investments. Those meetings are scheduled through the 2026-27 fiscal year, which ends June 30. While no hard contract is in place, Bickel’s contributions over the years have allowed Flagler Cares to build employment infrastructure and match other outside funding sources, Baird said.
As of 2025, Flagler Cares has 17 full-time employees. Their budget for 2024-25 was $2.6 million, underscoring the impact of large-scale donations such as Bickel’s and the hospital’s (for whom Flagler Cares provides support with disability applications).
It is still a relative drop in an ocean of need.
Easing burdens
“I just see the ramifications of people not being able to get medical care, and the toll it took on their bodies and their lives,” Bickel said. “For this group of people that started struggling financially with the things that most of the middle class is used to…it’s just vital. Otherwise they mostly don’t get medical care and suffer the consequences.”
According to the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute’s County Health Rankings & Roadmaps, between ten and 13 percent of Flagler County residents below the Medicare eligibility age of 65 were uninsured as of 2022. This puts Flagler just above the national average though Flagler’s number has dropped 4 percent since 2015. Before then, it had been consistently 5 to 6 percent higher than the national figure for the better part of a decade.
Also affecting Flagler is the number of providers relative to its population. University of Wisconsin data places Flagler County’s ratio of patients-to-primary-care physicians at 1,890 to 1 as of 2021. A 2012 analysis by the peer-reviewed journal Annals of Family Medicine placed the ideal ratio in a range of 1,397 to 1,947 per primary care provider.
Flagler Cares’ Village in City Marketplace fills some of the gaps, offering services available nowhere else in the county. Behavioral Health Program Supervisor Tamira Alston provides free mental health counseling to those without health insurance. Flagler County Community Paramedicine, a division of Flagler County Fire Rescue, keeps those in opioid recovery medicated during the interim period as they wait for an appointment. The Village also provides the only play therapy space in the county, giving mental health partners a space to conduct specialized therapy with children. The alternative would be a lengthy drive away.
Flagler Cares’ services and 10-year milestone have been recognized through a series of proclamations before local governments over the past weeks. Baird outlined those milestones in a presentation to the Palm Coast City Council on June 3, from its first direct services to clients in 2018 to its merging with One Voice for Volusia last July, expanding Flagler Cares’ footprint in such a way as to better equalize grant opportunities for Flagler County.
The Flagler County Village at City Marketplace was established in 2021 (in the same offices the City of Palm Coast occupied for so many years before it got its own City Hall), when the community was emerging from the pandemic. The Coordinated Opioid Recovery (CORe) initiative began in 2022.
The next 10 years
As Flagler County’s population is projected to grow substantially in the coming decades, the ability of groups like Flagler Cares to keep up will be pivotal to maintaining a healthy community. It won’t be easy as enormous cuts in government funding will diminish grants.
“I think we want to continue to use the approach that we’ve used in the community,” Baird said. “Identify gaps, seek partners that we can collaborate with to fill those gaps, and then ultimately bring new resources to address the priorities that we’ve identified.”
It’s not just about filling gaps and managing care, but visibly improving outcomes–whether it’s lowering addiction rates or eviction rates or raising access to insurance, disability services and the like.
“I’m hoping that we will be participatory in helping bring about a real change in the community on mental health, addiction, abuse, and homelessness,” Revels said. “Those are just huge, they’re hard to resolve. People like to put their heads in the sand. They don’t want to hear about it. Governments don’t want affordable housing in a neighborhood. But if we could tackle those major issues in this county and have them where we’re helping all the people that are embroiled in those situations, and we’re able to help with that through grants, funding, and supporters…I just think it would be an amazing organization.”
Connect with Flagler Cares
Those interested in contacting Flagler Cares to find out more about their services may visiting their website or call (386) 319-9483. Office hours are 8:30 am to 4:30 p.m. at 160 Cypress Point Parkway, (Building B, third floor, Suite 302), Palm Coast.
Flagler Cares is hosting A Legacy of Care: 10 Years Strong Saturday to mark the organization’s first decade, at 6 p.m. at the Palm Coast Community Center, 305 Palm Coast Parkway. The event, a fundraiser, is sold out, but contributions are still welcome here.
–Chris Gollon for FlaglerLive
Disclosure: FlaglerLive board member Cheryl Tristam, who is married to FlaglerLive’s editor, is a Flagler Cares employee. Though she did not participate in nor was interviewed for this article, Chris Gollon of AskFlagler was contracted by FlaglerLive to report and write it, with AskFlagler’s generous cooperation. FlaglerLive’s role was limited to editing.
flagler-cares-proclamation
Denise Calderwood says
[Please note the correction to this comment below.–FL]
Congratulations Carrie You have come a long way since we first worked together at the Department of Juvenile Justice all those years ago, 25 maybe when I got in trouble for writing a grant on behalf of the Flagler School System that was promised to an agency only serving Volusia County! Remember the old days when I led the Focus on Flagler Coalition before One Voice was even started and the Flagler Youth Center. Your next strategy should be to “Take Over” Flagler County Human Services since our County needs to significantly cut our budget…..at least by 2 million….and that Department doesn’t do as much as your agency does…..if you need guidance on how to get it done you know who to contact… or follow…..whatever happened to Robert Wood Johnson…..?
Joe D says
BRAVO FLAGLER CARES, and all their employees staff and community volunteers!!
As a Masters prepared Clinical Nurse Specialist and Certified Nurse Case Manager coming from a major East Coast Metropolitan area, there were multiple coordination groups, both government funded and non profits, where I could refer clients (and neighbors, relatives and friends).
However there are VERY LIMITED outreach services in the Flagler County area, much less a coordinated group when clients had MULTIPLE AND COMPLEX NEEDS (as many in the community have).
I was pleased to see what Flagler Cares has accomplished with limited resources and lots of CARE!
Hoping the next few years bring even more success to you community support services!
Atwp says
Sounds great! How long will this last under the current administration in D.C.?
Code Orange says
Help the needy haha nope the orange terror and his cult are cutting food stamps to give millionaires more money it a big steal even for a felon! Us aid used to feed the worlds hungriest people they so”Christian “they cut that first thing! Stop the orange treason!!
FlaglerLive says
Denise Calderwood’s memory is not accurate. One Voice was one of six Department of Juvenile Justice initiatives launched in 1997 and incorporated in 2001. Carrie Baird helped Flagler County government incorporate and secure a grant for Focus on Flagler in 2005, when it was under the leadership of Linda Linke, as Division of Corporations documents indicate, and when Colleen Conklin, the school board member, was a director. Denise Calderwood’s involvement with Focus on Flagler began in 2012, according to Division of Corporation documents, and was very brief, ending two years later, with the likes of Marian Irvin, the late Sims Jones, and Cheryl Massaro, the school board member, serving for many more years (and to this day for Irvin and Massaro).
We can forgive memory lapses. We prefer that individuals directly involved in the organizations they claim to have served not use this site to embroider their service with fictions, at the expense of individuals whose service speaks louder, and with more modesty.