Latest news with #FamilyPromise
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Family Promise holds event to discuss affordable healthcare
SAVANNAH, Ga. (WSAV) — Family Promise of the Coastal Empire, whose mission it is to end homelessness in our community, will host a public event to discuss one of the most pressing issues facing families today: access to affordable healthcare. Family Promise's CEO Katrina Bostick joined WSAV News 3's Andrew Davis on First News at Four to talk about their upcoming breakfast forum. Featured guests are Dr. Rena Douse, CEO, JC Lewis Primary Healthcare Center, Linton Hester, Licensed Professional Counselor, LLC and Dr. Fran Witt, CEO, Effingham Health Systems. Reserve your ticket here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
‘We stay on top of it.' New Pierce County homeless shelter hub showing success
Less than a year since coming on line, Pierce County's homeless shelter intake hub has helped more than 1,400 individuals find shelter. Last summer, it was announced that Family Promise of Pierce County would receive a $1 million grant from the county to create the county's first-ever homeless shelter access hub. With that funding, the organization leased a portion of an unused school building in Parkland to serve as a centralized intake hub for anyone experiencing homelessness in Pierce County to receive help finding shelter. While the shelter intake hub did not reach full operating capacity until November 2024, Family Promise of Pierce County told The News Tribune staff had helped refer 1,452 individuals experiencing homelessness into shelter as of May 20, 2025. Before Family Promise and the shelter intake hub, the only hotline available to families and individuals experiencing homelessness was the county's 211 line — which could only be used between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., Monday through Friday. Family Promise now operates a 24/7 hotline for any individual or family experiencing or at risk of homelessness. During the Pierce County Council's Health and Human Services Committee meeting on May 20, Family Promise of Pierce County CEO Steve Decker reported the organization's progress. 'People can go to they can call us, they can text us, they can show up in-person with an appointment, and we can do the intake in 15 different languages and connect them to emergency resources,' Decker told committee members about the organization's efforts to reduce barriers. He said the intake process can be as short as answering seven questions. 'Which means it is not a big barrier to get people's information enough to contact them and connect them to services,' he told the committee. Alternatively, Decker said, the organization has a longer intake process for more involved case management that uses over 240 points of data for individuals and families. In his presentation, Decker reported the shelter intake hub places an average of 121 individuals or families into shelter each month. The hub receives thousands of calls and text each month from people in crisis. Decker said a large part of Family Promise's success has been achieved through diligent and consistent communication with clients. Past intake programs funded by the county, such as Coordinated Entry, have been criticized by some left wondering when they will be contacted for follow-up. 'In our contract with the county, the requirement was that we return people's contact within 24 hours from initial contact,' Decker told the Health and Human Services Committee. 'I tell my staff that they only have an hour.' He reported to the committee Family Promise averages about a 10-minute follow-up time from when someone texts, fills out an intake online or calls. 'We stay on top of it,' Decker said. 'We want someone who is in crisis to know that someone is paying attention to them. Even if they are a family and we have to tell them that there is no [shelter] availability.' Decker said his organization has identified a number of barriers to getting families and individuals experiencing homelessness into shelter. The number one barrier is strict shelter requirements. He said strict requirements could be anything from requiring someone to pass a drug test to requiring that someone does not have certain prior criminal offenses while other offenses are allowable. Some shelters, such as non-congregate shelters, will not allow children with or without an adult. Duke Paulson is the executive director of the Tacoma Rescue Mission — one of the largest operators of shelter in Pierce County. The organization also operates the largest family shelter in the county. Paulson previously told The News Tribune shelters that serve youth and families are required to implement stricter screening processes than for low-barrier shelters, in some cases limiting the options for families seeking shelter. Family Promise of Pierce County has been involved in Pierce County's homelessness response for a little over a year. Its model has been to focus on unhoused families with children, utilizing AI and diligent case management to cut through bureaucratic barriers. According to data reported by Family Promise, families they have helped into shelter spent an average of 26 days in emergency shelter. 'That is fast,' Decker told the committee. Of the 145 families the organization has helped into stable housing since the organization began operations near the beginning of 2024, only four have done so with subsidized housing vouchers. Meaning, 141 of those families were able to find and pay for housing on their own. 'That's the model.' Decker told the committee. 'We shouldn't have people depend on [the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development] or the lottery systems to get off the street.'
Yahoo
18-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Clayton gifts $20K to Family Promise to support homeless families
ROANOKE, Va. (WFXR) – Family Promise of Greater Roanoke has received a $20,000 grant from Clayton Homes, boosting support for families in Roanoke City, County, and Salem in need of housing. Funds will aid families who are experiencing homelessness to find a home quickly to regain stability. The 'A Future Begins at Home' initiative began in 2019 and has served more than 30,000 families. Roanoke Planning staff working on zoning reform with focus on housing expansion 'The partnership between Family Promise and Greater Roanoke will allow us to serve more families. The goal is to prevent families from coming into shelter by providing short-term case management and services to help them overcome the largest obstacle to finding suitable housing,' says Amy M. Morgan, Executive Director. 'We are very excited to be chosen for this opportunity.' Clayton's financial support has donated over 18 homes to the Family Promise national network since 2019 to allow families to stay together and aid them in working to find permanent housing. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
18-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump admin denies request to extend FEMA application deadline in GA
RICHMOND HILL, Ga. (WSAV) — The Trump administration denied Georgia Governor Brian Kemp's request to extend the deadline for Hurricane Helene victims to apply for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency Friday. However, hurricane victims in coastal Georgia, one of the areas hit hardest by Helene, haven't all necessarily rebuilt and moved on. 'They sent a field person here, but the people making those decisions are the ones that need to be here and see,' Barry Doepp, a victim of hurricanes Debby and Helene, said. In response to Kemp's request, a senior official with the Trump administration said, 'It has been determined that the increased level of funding you have requested for major disaster fema-4830-dr is not warranted.' Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) responded to the Trump administration's denial this week, calling it wrong, and urging the president to reconsider. 'Trump's taken over, and I like Trump,' Doepp said. 'I voted for him. He's done a lot of good things since he's taken office in a short period of time, but that's probably one that I would question about them not extending.' While he has received money from FEMA, Doepp said the process was difficult. 'It took time because of the fact I'm not internet savvy,' Doepp said. 'I would use my phone sometimes because my main computer was down, and I would go to the Richmond Hill library sometimes.' Advocates agreed the process can be challenging. 'That rebuild looks different for everyone,' Katrina Bostick, Director of Family Promise of the Coastal Empire, said. 'So, for families that do not have a lot of resources, or there could be a tech gap or things of that nature where they don't have access to complete those applications. Not having that extension could be extremely impactful to how they make their households whole again.' Moving forward, organizations like Family Promise said they'll be stepping in to take over some of the relief efforts people can no longer apply to through FEMA. If you'd like to get in contact with Family Promise, you can find more info here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
31-01-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Spokane opens new addiction recovery homeless shelter, partially replaces beds for families
Jan. 30—Two more small-capacity shelters have been added to the city of Spokane's homeless service system, including one focused on families with children and another for people actively trying to recover from addiction. Mayor Lisa Brown made the announcement in front of Family Promise of Spokane's headquarters Tuesday morning, continuing the rollout of her signature "scatter-site model" decentralizing away from the large congregant shelter that had typified her predecessor's approach to giving the homeless a place to sleep and receive other services. "(Homelessness is) not a one-size-fits-all issue," Brown said Tuesday. "There are people in our unhoused community with different challenges and varying needs, so we are working towards a model that is more personalized and focused on specific populations and their challenges, matching providers, faith communities and resources to people and their needs." The new facilities include a 15-bed shelter operated by Family Promise of Spokane and an at least 20-bed shelter operated by Compassionate Addiction Treatment, expanding the city's scattered shelter model to seven facilities, including the Cannon Street Shelter meant to serve as a hub between many of the others. Family Promise has operated emergency homeless shelters for families with children for many years, and the 15-bed expansion announced Tuesday only partially replaced 45 beds that were lost last year, largely due to a loss of funding from the city and county, said Joe Ader, the organization's CEO. The partial re-expansion brings the organization's total capacity to 70 beds. That organization has been experimenting with the "scatter-site" model of shelters for five years, beginning with the COVID-19 pandemic, and has operated as many as four facilities at a time to reduce the number of families sharing the same space and try to tailor services to families with different needs, Ader said. For instance, one facility caters to families with newborns, he noted. All of the recently added beds are already full, signaling a strong need for shelters for families, though Ader claimed his organization was particularly efficient at quickly moving families into permanent housing, cycling the beds for the next group. "We get more people housed than anybody else," Ader said. "We're very, very focused on housing rather than the shelter beds." For Compassionate Addiction Treatment, on the other hand, operating a homeless shelter is largely new, with the exception of short-term management of a cold weather shelter last year. "We're still working out the details," Burchinal said in response to differing reports of how many beds their site would maintain. "We won't be doing (drug screenings) as a prerequisite for entry, because there are already locations in town that provide shelter with that as a prerequisite — we'll be working with people actively engaged with services to stabilize and stay in recovery." Burchinal added that their clients will not be allowed to have or use drugs on the property or surrounding neighborhood, but that "we understand total abstinence may not occur until someone has a stable place to sleep." "I want to be clear, our other goal is to be very much a positive presence in our neighborhood," Burchinal said. "I know the structure of this, along with our housing case management, will only bring more positive results without bringing a negative presence to the neighborhood." Their entry into the often controversial space of operating a homeless shelter is notable, given the heated opposition the organization has faced from various groups that have blamed CAT for the crime and dysfunction of the troubled downtown intersection of Second and Division. Last summer, when Compassionate Addiction Treatment had proposed moving a sobering center from downtown Spokane into the Chief Garry Park neighborhood, a successful petition was started to oppose the effort. Spurred by Andrew Northrop, an associate director of the conservative lobbying group Spokane Home Builders Association, the petition calling CAT a magnet for disorder garnered the support of hundreds of neighbors and dozens of businesses and other lobbying groups, like the Spokane Business Association led Larry Stone, the developer, major political donor and owner of the building that once housed the city's Trent shelter. Stone and other developers such as Sheldon Jackson, of Selkirk Development, called for the total defunding of CAT and blamed the organization for the drug use and homelessness that proliferated near their old downtown location, which Jackson has claimed largely disappeared after the organization moved a mile east to Third Avenue. "They move 9 blocks East and the drug addicts on Division disappear," Jackson wrote to a cohort of hundreds of other mostly business and property owners in a Jan. 14 email. Burchinal rejects that the organization, which works to get those struggling with addiction off drugs and off the streets, was what caused the area's issues. "Are we concerned that (launching a shelter) will give opportunity for wealthy developers to attack us again? Yes," Burchinal said. "But we are committed to our mission to help people exiting homelessness." "I would ask people to be curious, to learn about us, rather than accept the stories they've been told," she added.
