Family aid group looking to expand
Sebastian County initiative hopes to broaden its reach in Crawford County
An ongoing initiative in Sebastian County to help stabilize families in need is looking to broaden its reach in the River Valley.
Karen Phillips, director of the 100 Families Initiative, said that the initiative seeks to expand its operations in Crawford County.
The initiative held a meeting with community leaders at the Crawford County Adult Education Center in Van Buren last month.
The communitywide initiative began in Fort Smith for Sebastian County in February 2019, Phillips said. A total of 48 individuals and organizations, including nonprofits, private companies and government entities, are involved in the Sebastian County initiative. Phillips said that at this point, Hamilton House, an organization in both Sebastian and Crawford counties, has “kind of been piloting” in Crawford County.
The goal of the 100 Families Initiative is to preserve or reunite families, Phillips said in an interview. The program helps families move “from crisis to career” using existing community resources, according to a page on the website for Restore Hope Arkansas. This is accomplished by engaging community partners, training agencies on a collaborative case management system, and recruiting case managers to respond when a family is in crisis.
RESTORE HOPE ARKANSAS
Paul Chapman, executive director of Restore Hope Arkansas, said his organization was started by Gov. Asa Hutchinson after he took office in 2015. The Restore Hope website states the purpose was to bridge a gap between government services and communities struggling to reduce the incarceration rate, facilitate a successful re-entry from incarceration to freedom, and reduce how many children are entering Arkansas’ foster care system.
“What we believe and what the research shows is that the types of problems that we all gathered here today to discuss are so complex, that not one organization, governmental or non-governmental, can actually make the kinds of changes that we all hope to make that, because we all operate in silos to our authorities, whatever they may be like without really any mechanisms to partner together, we have this execution gap,” Chapman said at the Feb. 11 meeting in Crawford County.
In regard to 100 Families, Chapman said on Feb. 7 that Restore Hope provides the coordination and infrastructure in which the community carries out the work of the initiative.
In 2015, Chapman said Arkansas had the fastest-growing prison population per capita in the United States. It grew by 21% from 2012 to 2016. This increase took the Arkansas Department of Human Services Division of Children and Family Services by surprise, he said.
In 2016, there were nearly 5,000 youth in foster care at year end, Chapman said. That same year, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Arkansas had the highest percentage of children who had had, at some point in their lives, an incarcerated parent or guardian, 16%.
“As we were putting people in jail and in prison for infractions, a lot of them were for parole and probation technical violations,” Chapman said. “So, it wasn’t new crime and new convictions. It was the inability to meet the demands of the supervision that the individuals were already on.”
100 FAMILIES MISSION
As of Jan. 31, there were 143 families in the 100 Families Initiative, which represented 358 children, according to Phillips at the meeting. She said she is passionate about the program because she sees the execution gap that Chapman described every day.
“I see the families struggle to do the most minimal of tasks, and it seems that almost like everyone on the flip side, the other side of the table is, ‘Why can’t you do this?’” Phillips said. “And instead of realizing that the things that they’re dealing with are not just excuses, but they are true barriers, we give up on people, and 100 Families doesn’t do that.”
Phillips said there were 69 noncustodial cases in the 100 Families Initiative. These are families who have children placed in foster care, who are working toward reunification with those children, and who need help to achieve this goal.
“So we walk alongside DCFS [Division of Children and Family Services] as a community,” Phillips said.
“This is not Restore Hope’s clients. I just want you to know that. This is multiple community organizations saying they’re going to serve, holistically, these families and provide case management that’s collaborative and that has communication at its core.” The program also had 48 protective services and 26 preventive cases, according to Phillips. Phillips defined protective services cases as those in which the children are still in the home and a “safety plan” is in place, but the families are typically in crisis in multiple areas and need assistance in getting out of that situation. Preventative cases do not have a case with Division of Children and Family Services.
Phillips said organizations in the initiative assess about 14 different areas with its clients. They use a 5-point scale to classify the severity of the crisis the family is facing in these areas, with 1 meaning “crisis,” 2 and 3 meaning “at risk,” 4 meaning “stabilized,” and 5 meaning “thriving.”
“We use this, we have definitions so that, across the board, no matter where they come in contact with you, whether it’s DCFS [Division of Children and Family Services], CASA [Court Appointed Special Advocate], school system … you can make the same assessment, and you can finally track results as a community, and that’s what’s so important,” Phillips said.
“This is something where you walk beside someone, and, as a community, you set up a care team.”
To accomplish this, the 100 Families Initiative utilizes an online system called Hope AR that is compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998. This allows agencies in the initiative to share information with one another and collaborate in connecting client families with resources they can use, such as housing assistance or a recovery counselor.
The top six crisis areas in the community, Phillips said, are transportation, employment, education, recovery, food and housing.
EXAMPLE OF PROGRESS
Two people who have benefited from the services provided by the 100 Families Initiative are Fort Smith residents Amanda Myer and her husband, Patrick, who joined the program last July. Beforehand, their two children had been taken by the state Department of Human Services after the couple were arrested and failed drug tests.
Amanda Myer said after she and Patrick got out of jail the next day, a department caseworker put her in touch with Phillips.
“And we started the DHS requirements [through the initiative], such as … parenting classes and a psych evaluation, and drug and alcohol therapy,” Myer said. “But we just kind of felt like we needed some more support from the community.”
At the time, Myer said Patrick was in school while she was working part time. Having just one source of income caused the pair to fall behind on some of their bills. However, Phillips helped them apply for rental assistance from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and, for utility help, pointed them in the direction of the Crawford-Sebastian Community Development Council Inc. in Fort Smith.
“We kept meeting with her, and we would go to her even if we just needed somebody to talk to, which happened a lot,” Myer said. “When we started getting home visits, we needed a crib for our 2-year-old because before she had always just slept with us and that was one of the requirements that DHS had, so she had someone from the Care Portal that works with 100 Families bring us a crib that day to our house. They delivered it to us and everything.”
Phillips said the Care Portal is a resource that connects churches to specific needs of families that are either monetary or physical.
Myer said their children returned in a trial home placement in September, and they regained custody Dec. 12. She and Patrick also got married on Aug. 23, two days before their first unsupervised visit with their children. In addition, Patrick completed his education and found work as a refrigeration technician.
The Patricks are still a part of the initiative. She said they are dealing with transportation issues. She believes that, without 100 Families, their situation could have turned out differently.
“It’s hard to go through this process on your own, so having that support is really helpful,” Myer said. “And it’s something that I’d really like to see other areas of Arkansas and the country take on because … there’s a lot of judgment automatically when you have a DHS case open, and to get that kind of support and have people that want to help you and want to fix it and don’t just say, ‘Well, you got your kids taken,’ I think that’s really crucial in improving everybody.”