Founded in 2005 to address the academic, social and spiritual needs of children on Fort Worth’s southside, Fortress Youth Development Center (Fortress) announced last week that they would be closing, citing primarily broken funding promises for child care subsidies from the State legislature.
“In 2021 and 2022, we carefully accepted federal COVID relief funds to expand our programs, helping families in our community get back to work during an incredibly difficult time. To maintain this expanded capacity, we pursued and received Texas Rising Star 4-Star accreditation, a rigorous process that would allow us to accept Child Care Management Services (CCMS), the state childcare subsidy for Tarrant County.
As Fortress made these shifts, we were informed that abundant CCMS funding would continue to support working families, and much of our sustainability plan was built around these CCMS funds. Unfortunately, Texas legislators have failed to make the necessary investments to ensure qualifying families can receive the support they need. Over two years later, more than 20,000 Tarrant County children remain on the waiting list. Despite our planning and patience, only 3% of Fortress families ever received the subsidy,” shared Stacy Agee Martin, Executive Director at Fortress.
Last fall, the organization accepted defeat on the CCMS funding and pivoted to accepting private pay clients. Enrollment was limited and feedback indicated their 4-day service model didn’t work for working families.
An emergency fundraising campaign was launched last November with some but not total success. As the organization looked at the state and private funding landscape, it made the difficult decision to close its doors and made that announcement via press release last week.
On Monday, Fortress issued a new press release sharing that two foundations had stepped up to help. The Rainwater Foundation and another anonymous foundation have provided temporary relief that allows the organization to continuing serving children and families without interruption while providing time and resources for the organization to explore other restructure and funding avenues to mission impact.
Martin shared that this last minute funding reprieve would allow the organization to continue service uninterrupted, move to a 5-day service model, enroll both private pay and CCMS families, develop a long-term sustainability plan and engage in deeper community collaboration to ensure Southside families continue to receive the services they need.
