I Get By, With a Little Help From My Friends….
January 31, 2008Posted in: 1 Comment
Next Steps….
It has been crazy busy. 1Mentors is close to activation. Mandy is doing site visits and needs assessments of the individual shelters. The “job descriptions” are nearly done as well.
On the medical side, I met with Richard Langford with Mildred Bayer today to work out the details. We are creating a new model for their Black Bag Project. He has had conversations with our medical team and with UT this week. The only detail to be worked out is the cost of the prescriptions/medications.
Richard also told me he has a meeting set with the mental health agencies to address that side as well. He also said he has the monthly calendar completed and plans to distribute it at the TAAEH meeting, via mail, and via email so the organizations can post it for the people.
He will also be explaining to TAAEH members the new program of appointments for people with a referral from their agency. Good stuff!
1Works
We had a meeting this week on the 1Works program. A building has been secured by Cherry Street that will act as the school/headquarters.
Dan Rogers is going to DC this weekend to work on the funding side.
Read more »
Ready, Willing & ABLE
January 26, 2008Posted in: 2 Comments
Ready
When I was on the TLC Board and told them about the Saturday morning meetings we wanted to have as a result of the Mayors lunch for the homeless, they said they weren’t “ready”. That we shouldn’t move that fast until we have structure in place, and that can be part of the plan next year. In fact they said my plan to do this was “sabotage” of the TLC.
In fact they finally gave me “permission” to do it as long as it was not associated with TLC, but was a part of Tent City.
Okey Dokey.
Lives are being changed NOW.
As many of you know on January 5th we went ahead and had a two hour meeting with over 100 homeless friends.
Several items came up, but the most urgent THEY said was the lack of consistent access to the mental health medications they need to be stabilized, and the lack of consistent access to medical help and prescriptions.
So from that meeting we got a PLAN of action for what’s needed, rather than what we “think” they need. Instead of having meetings about how we can put together the teams to put together the plans to be able to solve these issues, we convened some of the medical and mental health experts currently helping the homeless who came voluntarily, off the clock on a Saturday morning, January 19th to create action NOW.
1 of the complaints the homeless had was they had to line up outside the Mildred Bayer Clinic for the Homeless at 5.30 am in any weather to get in line for one of the 5 morning slots for optical services.
The suggested solution was appointments. The problem MBC had before was people getting appointments but there were no shows so slots were being unfilled. We all thought what if the case workers made the appointments for the individual and helped assure they would make it to the appointment.
Only six days later, it was done. Richard Langford, Director of MBC called and said they worked out the details and wanted to give the appointment system from case managers a two month trial, with individuals able to “fly standby” to cover no shows, kinda like every other doctor or dentist does with appointments. If there are cancellations we get a call saying we can get in earlier.
As I wrote January 1st, “To most people the “homeless” are nothing more than vague faces of poverty reflected in the mirror of a society afraid to even look, much less help.
To us that live, laugh, love and serve with them they are friends that Matter. God’s very precious children who are hurting and dying, but craving, aching and struggling for mental, physical, emotional and financial serenity.
Just like you and me! They just do not have a home.”
It is easy to see how the homeless should be treated. Just like you would want to be treated.
Willing
As for the issue of limited access to medical doctors and medicines for preventative care. What any emergency room worker will tell you is many people, homed and unhomed come to the emergency room with problems that could have been solved much earlier had the individual without insurance had access to health care much earlier.
While our Saturday morning meetings can do nothing about the national health care crisis, we CAN do something about getting our friends access to preventative care.
As we noted earlier Ruth Arden, EC of St. Paul’s said at the meeting that she had a friend, a doctor who is a phone call away if she needs her, often by telephone or if necessary the occasional unscheduled visit.
Lights, bells and sirens went off. 1Matters! 1 to 1. 1 doctor to 1 shelter.
All we would need to do is find 14 or so doctors who would volunteer to be there for 1 shelter, and we would ask them to serve a 1 year term. We knew this is doable. There are at LEAST 14 docs in this town in private practice or retired that would love to do this. (And maybe an additional optician or 2 volunteering once a month to allow expansion of the vision program)
A 1Matters team of 4 people from the medical community has already started contacting docs.
The only question we had would be the malpractice insurance. Richard Langford called yesterday, six days after our meeting and said he got approval. Several years ago MBC had a fully funded ”Black Bag” project that provided docs and nurses paid by MBC to go to the shelters. We will be moving the 1Matters volunteer docs under the “Black Bag” project and the MBC umbrella, which already has malpractice insurance.
Stay tuned, exciting results and details coming shortly.
1Matters, will you?
ABLE
It is my understanding from a friend in Cleveland that ABLE is planning to file a suit by the end of the month against the City of Toledo, claiming the city’s anti-panhandling ordinance is unconstitutional.
Let me tell you a story. Last October I was talking to my friend Mike Stoops with the National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington DC. He advised me he heard Toledo is the meanest city to the homeless in the state of Ohio.
This surprised me because I found Toledo to be the direct opposite to the homeless. I asked where he heard this, and he said a friend in Cleveland with the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless told him, and in fact said that ABLE was going to file suit on behalf of the homeless.
I asked why and Mike told me they were going to take on the anti panhandling ordinance as the homeless were being harassed and arrested for it. This was news to me, and to the homeless I work with. In fact I didn’t even know we had an anti-panhandling ordinance.
I emailed Gerry Dendinger with city council to verify and he said yes, and emailed me the statute… enacted in 1987.
The next day I invited the ABLE attorney working on this “case” to lunch. He told me his biggest problem was finding a homeless person to file on behalf of. He said he had not done any research on the history of arrests, but there were around 1200 arrests from 6/06 – 6/07 for loitering and panhandling was a part of that. And he intended to take this all the way to the Supreme Court. He had even gotten Jeff Gamso with the ACLU involved.
That means the 300 or so chronically homeless on the streets were all panhandling, and had been arrested 4 times each. If this were true, this would be a problem I might have heard about.
I asked out of those 1200 loitering charges, how many were for prostitution. He said he didnt know because he hadn’t looked. He said he had “sampled” the arrests and found most of the police reports stated panhandling as the only illegal activity.
He said he intended to take this all the way to the Supreme Court. He had even gotten Jeff Gamso with the ACLU involved.
I asked if he had talked to the city about this and he said no.
I asked him that if I had a beef and was going to sue him, would he want me to just sue, or talk to him first. He said talk to him first.
He then told me part of his “Settlement Strategy” was to get the police department to have mandatory “sensitivity training” for all officers.
I suggested that if this was his goal, I bet a simple call to Chief Navarre would probably get this accomplished on a VOLUNTARY basis. I told him a lot of the officers I know would love this information to find other options rather than use the last resort of arresting them. Every year at Tent City the police usually bring at least a half a dozen people to Tent City because there are options. (Including this one we documented November 10th.)
In fact JUST last night Jonette Patterson from Furtherance Foundation got a call from an on duty officer from his private cell phone trying to place an individual rather than take them in.
I said I am not naive, yes there are officers, the quite minor exception on any department that harass pretty much everybody, including the homeless. But the majority seem to care.
I said, “Let me get this straight, you want to file a suit against an entity that you have never talked to, over a case that doesnt exist, and that you can’t even find a plaintif for?”
I told him come to Tent City the following week and ask the homeless if this was a problem. I saw him there, a total of 5 minutes. I asked the homeless at Tent City if this was an issue. I found only one out of at least 100 I asked that had been arrested for panhandling. I asked the circumstances and he said he deserved it because he was “drunk as a skunk.” and that was the lightest charge they could give him.
I told him I was going to publicly side with the homeless on this and join whoever he was suing to get them removed for lack of standing. I told him and a higher up in ABLE that I thought this was nothing more than his attempt to get self publicity to pad his resume.
Lunch ended.
If you are a funder or donor to ABLE then you are a huge supporter of social justice. And if you beleive in true justice rather than “publicity justice” be sure to make your stance known to them.
Addendum: This morning we had about 150 unhomed friends attend our Food for Thought. I walked down the line and asked every single person if they knew ANYBODY that had been arrested for panhandling. ONE person said yes, but that was when he was in Miami.
I talked to several homeless friends about ABLE this morning. They too think this is bull and several said they will join me at a press conference after the filing of this suit, they said our police and our city deserve that support.
Double Addendum: 1 of the questions we will be asking the ABLE attorney, hopefully under oath will be documentation and oral history of what they had to go through to find a plaintiff. They had been working and searching for nearly a year.
1Mentors & What’s Up Doc?
January 24, 2008Posted in: 1 Comment
1Mentors
The 1Mentors program is taking great shape already. You know that when things very easily fall together that it is something that is meant to be. Such is the 1Mentors program!
Here is where we are at:
We are starting with a core group of shelters and we will have regular times for the meetings, like every other Monday 7-9 to assure a group setting. The methodology is we will have a “site captain” who will take lead for that shelter and will be responsible for organizing the mentors for that site, as well as maintaining assessments of the guests needs in conjunction with the case managers in order to assure we provide the right mentors or tutors.
The construct is our 1Matters, 1 at a time philosophy, “Be 1 that Matters to 1 that Matters,” coupled with the ”swarm multiplication” methodology pioneered by Food for Thought.
The “swarm multiplication” methodology works like this: If a Mentor needs to help someone get an interview somewhere, or say needs size 13XXX boots, word first goes to the other site Mentors. If the need is not met, we will have set up a private online forum which will provide access to all of the Mentors in the program. If the need still cannot be met, since most of the Mentors will represent a multitude of churches, they can then go to their churches. If the need can’t be met there, when appropriate the need can then be posted on the ”public” side of the forum, which will also have any needs of the shelters in the program, such as cash, food etc., or the Christmas Basket needs etc.
We are starting with Cherry Street Mission men’s and women’s shelters, Toledo Gospel Rescue Mission men’s and women’s shelters , Furtherance Foundation men’s and women’s shelters and Harbor House women’s shelter. We are talking to two other shelters as well.
Amanda Lyons has already started getting this program up and running with site visits scheduled for this week and next, as well as working on the program construct. We already have over 30 Mentors lined up awaiting deployment. If you want to Mentor, email Amanda at 1Matters dot org.
What’s Up Doc?
At Tent City this year hundreds of guests needed health care of some sort, which we figured out was an access issue. When we met with the homeless we got more definition of the access issues. One was the availability of appointments and the other was regular access to docs.
As for the appointments, that is being worked on now and looks very feasible. We will know something by the first of next week.
As for the access issue, building off of Ruth at St. Paul’s execution we figured out it might be much easier to recruit doctors individually (1Matters) and attach them to a participating shelter. We will ask the doctor to commit to being available to the director by phone especially at nights and weekends (thank you for calling tech support, lol), as well as either visit the shelter, send someone or make referrals as needed.
This might or might not work, but it makes sense. We think there are several doctors, including retired doctors that would be interested. Richard Langford, director of the Mildred Bayer Clinic said this can be driven through and a part of Mildred Bayer. We are sure the needs for the docs will run the range from occasionally to frequently. We are trying to do that assessment now and will pair the right doc for each.
Another Reason Why!
One of my chief complaints is about the HMIS. I have stated before that I believe there has been gross mismanagment of the program. I am even more convinced after my call with Tom Clapsaddle with the Toledo Gospel Rescue Mission. I asked Tom if TGRM participates in the HMIS and he said no. I asked why, and he said no one has ever called him to get him into it. I asked if the systems manager Carlin Abbott ever called him or contacted him, Tom said no.
Tom said the only time he even saw Carlin was at a COC meeting and Carlin said he would call Tom to explain the program. Carlin never called. This is BULL!
I am taking my fight to get the HMIS info up another notch. I requested information December 17th from the city who is the agent for the program. I hand delivered a request to the Mayor on 12/27 and was told 12/28 that the city had requested the info from Kyle Grefe, who is currently responsible for the program.
An AVP of Technology with a local fortune 500 company has even volunteered to take an objective look at the system which the TLC board turned down.
ps. I emailed Carlin this morning to contact Tom.
Now THAT’S what we are talking about!
January 21, 2008Posted in: 0 Comments
“Keeping it Real”
When we had the meeting with the 100+ homeless friends two weeks ago, they liked that we were keeping it real. While we were there we made a commitment to get action, to get stuff done, and report back to them quarterly. This is our accountability to them.
At that meeting we identified 9 certain issues.
- Lack of consistent access to health-care
- Lack of consistent access to mental health-care
- Lack of consistent medication for either
- Assistance filling out applications online
- Job Contact barriers: No address/phone for application/interview clothes/criminal history/addiction
- Storage areas for goods, can’t take backpack on interview
- Transportation for interviews
- Supportive safe housing after coming out from a program
- Provide services to the 3 Levels of Motivation- Ready/Mid Tier/Not ready
- Lack of reading and writing skills, or incomplete education. (GED)
We know the biggest reasons for homelessness are addiction and mental health issues. From a priority standpoint point we chose the ones we can address NOW for immediate results, for an immediately impact.
Our methodology is to invite all the participants in an issue, define the issue and agree on paths to a solution, then assign an interested, accountable project manager and team to get the solution(s) executed and accountable to the group.
Our first target’s are item’s 1,2 & 3. Having consistent access to mental health-care and the medicine’s associated with it was cited by many as a huge problem, as well as consistent access to health-care and medicines.
We had 20 people attend the meeting Saturday morning. Represented were the primary care systems for both medical and mental health: The Mildred Bayer Clinic for the Homeless, St. Paul’s and the Lucas County Mental Health and Recovery Services Board, St. V’s as well as homeless and formerly homeless to help “keep it real”.
It was interesting to see normal human dynamics at this two hour meeting. For example when we started to mention the gaps, one of the agencies at first felt defensive and justified things. Once he realized we were there to help them provide SOLUTIONS rather than attack them, the meeting got rolling.
We are too swamped now to detail all the items and progress, but to give you an idea of what we are working on are: Getting the ability to make appointments at the clinics so people don’t have to arrive there at 5.30 am to get a spot; Access to mental health medications for example on Friday nights for people released at that time or anytime on a weekend: As well as access to doctors nights and weekends.
To that end the ideas are to work with Mildred Bayer to get project Black Bag back, as well as an idea Ruth Arden generated with her comment about how St. Paul’s does it. She said she has a doctor friend that she can call for emergencies on nights and weekends. My thinking is an alternative might be easier to recruit a doctor, or even a retired doctor for each shelter to be there for ”phone support” or if needed visit the shelter. For some shelters this might be used once a month, other’s more.
But this kind of 1 on 1, the 1Matters concept of 1 doctor mattering to 1 shelter might be easier to manage for all involved. We have 3 medical people working on this as we speak and will know the viability by the next meeting the 2nd of February.
I should note the BIGGEST gap is communication: Not only not knowing what services are available, but also how to access them. For example the solution here is Mildred Bayer will start emailing their calendar to the shelters who will post it prominently as well as the info on how to access their services, and they will also post it on the TAAEH website for easy access by all agencies. When United Way’s 211 goes on the internet shortly, it will dramatically and immediately improve communication of services as well.
You get the idea.
1Mentors
Using Tent City as an example, one thing we have consistently been very good at is bringing the community, bringing new people, new energy to the cause of homelessness.
Furthering the 1Matters mission of being 1 that Matters to 1 that Matters, we are creating a program called 1Mentors. We are seeking people that want to provide 1 on 1 mentoring and/or tutoring to our homeless friends starting in specified times and locations. We already have 2 dozen people signed up as mentors as well as a woman to coordinate the project.
Our first slots are for Mondays 5-7 p.m. at the Cherry Street Mission Community Center; and Monday’s 7-9 p.m. will be at the Furtherance Foundation men and women’s house.
We are starting with three locations and will spread to other shelters, locations and existing mentoring programs that sign up. We already have three committed churches and will be having lunch Friday with the pastor of one of the largest who also expressed significant interest.
1Mentors will be the platform we will use to staff the 1Works program with mentors as well.
In particular right now we want to find people that can provide tutoring to start addressing items 4 and 10 above. Where appropriate the mentors will also work to help connect individuals to any needed services. If you are interested in signing up as a mentor/tutor please email amanda at 1matters dot org.
