good afternoon and welcome to commissioner scorner i hope all of you had happy holidays in this wonderful season of law i today we have of philip who are all like from the jewish family and children's services jewish family and children's services the suncoast since two thousand and four and i've had the opportunity to work in my own community since that time and it's just a wonderful thing i'm a social worker by training and along with our c e o as chairman we profess to run a great social service oriented working as ation for the community we serve and your title with the jewish family and children's services is friends in for programs now the jewish family and children's services you have what's called the housing first philosophy could you explain that for us well for we we maybe i could aggressive a little bit and give you some of the history of  how we move to the place where back in two thousand and two the united way now the suncoast was looking for a program to support so because the united way staff knew that we had experience with and immigrants russian immigrants we did a lot of immigration work and we had strong case management and they went to rose chapman  i asked her what sort of program she would suggest and she developed a building strong families program which was specifically directed to help schoolchildren stay in place as a housing prevention program it wasn't the term housing first and even exist back then and we began our work in housing the first year we were in we were in place we serve twenty five families the second year we serve hundred families at this point since that time we serve thousands of families and children and help them stay in place along the line  the federal government and some of the funding sources that we've tapped into were prevention stored in moving towards working with literally homeless families now let me go back to building strong families program was designed to help people stay in housing and you have some figures about what happens how much it costs if somebody actually loses their house versus how how together make sure there's no disruption of the children or else so and it's far less expensive you know the national figures on prevention is a dollars worth of prevention saves eight dollars worth of trying to prevention cost half of what of course for the program or operation military assistance program which is heavy on working with literally homeless families it's like seventeen hundred versus thirty eight is is made to help people get into permanent housing is quickly as possible that's where there is a very very close similarity to housing first the difference between i'm in my opinion the difference between the two is in has more conditions and usually their financial but it's limited and a true housing first program would allow for financial and other supports last for as long agree with the notion you know that we want to we since we are about using the community as resource for housing you know we certainly would want to try to get the people who come to us and the people who come to us kno our focus is on helping people have a community place now where you we've used the term housing first and you've talked about a housing first philosophy can you explain what housing first really means in terms of the profession for me and different people have different notions i know people who implemented housing first way back right down the road at the university of south florida one of my old friends mark and go hard help develop nationally you have the whole movement of housing first and if you would ask him what it is housing first is targeted to help people with chronic and persistent mel and or substance abuse or cone coding disorders and to enter into housing it implies that you will take the person regardless how they present and place this individual who is very challenging with this family is very challenging and you will place them into housing and regardless of what their condition is regardless of their acceptance of service regardless of how long it takes to assist the person to get to the point where they may be able to afford a wall or a portion of their  sustainability in that housing that is the classic to be housing first and it implies a really huge commitment you know in programming and funding passion i mean if you take the money and put it aside the passion that the people have who do this sort of service is huge i think because the folks  this sort of service are have a lot of challenges lot of obstacles and housing first actually has evidence that that shows that it does work for people who are though this challenge people the intent is very much the same right i mean as i indicated before the real differences are the length of time that you might anticipate and whether or not these conditions when we do going to be sustainable because we have finite resources so you have some if you know we will provide all sorts of case management we will help people coming gaijin getting benefits of all sorts of linking to different services working with the school house link in the school systems and just try to bring all the service to gether but the last part of the puzzle is the financial system right versus housing first the first part of the puzzle might be notes that's one of the things that is a bit different when it comes to rapper we have a building strong families program in our operation military assistance program through that's funded through this support of service veterans families grant that is different i mean they that's where their housing first philosophy comes in and they just want folks to get into housing and want to do work with them after that and we can help them up to eight months of live sports and how did you get involved with the veteran's administration program we again you know it's a it's a wonderful history i mean back around two thousand and nine gulf coast community foundation became a recipient of a brave grant which is a national grant to support in housing and it was before the v a was really pushing it and was a wonderful donor who put a huge amount of money in across multiple states and go cause me foundation was selected to minister for florida and because of our history of working in in this area gulf coast asked us if we would like to be a partner in this and of course we said yes and we started working with our veteran community and primarily prevention that lasted for that funding lasted a couple years but unfortunately it was condition funding the person who gave the funding said i will be more than happy to continue the funding but nobody with a grant for supportive services that are a family and when did that happen i was in two thousand and ten and since we had the history working with a long history of working with the prevention programs and now at this point some rapid rehabs and we put our application and we were one of the we were in the first cohort there were eighty five organizations across the country that were selected and the grant was  just over five hundred thousand dollars we had to serve one hundred sixty five people the next year the v a said you can double your grant so for the community you know we've course went out and we put in a request to double the grant and we were fortunate that we got it and now we had to serve excuse me two hundred sixty five families that has been pretty much outs been for the last few years  that another important feature of that is because we or an accredited wordings asian some providing services we were allowed a multi year grant and only this year to get their next funding cycle as we again have to apply could you tell us what accredited means i'm sure most people for tibet's a joint commission on accreditation and hospitals have social service organizations like ours have a couple of different national accredited batteries and this really is the best because the standards around specific programs are very tied to the sort of service that you do and it also allows you to implement the services based on your community it's a context will accreditation versus the creating by saying to you you must do it this way or that way and now in the last year how many people have you placed store kept in housing through the building strong families program well the total number of people in excess of fourteen hundred people but we talk about families and you know there are there was well over five hundred him that we work with as i indicated before you know mapped it was over you know three hundred forty three or so families that we work with and those are veterans families who are there the program right and the other just our families in our community one of the questions i'm sure you get to is you know is there sufficient resources right is there is there a late capacity with don't help everybody who comes to our door because we do but do we have enough social workers on our staff to be able to help them at the moment they walk in the door and when you talk about  staff tell me what it takes in terms of staff in terms of skill level to do this kind of a program whether it is prevention services or working literally homeless in the hi i've been in this field since i've been a i got my master's in one nine hundred seventy seven and i've done bridey of different things work in a variety of different programs i will tell you this is the most important but the most difficult work i think certainly a bachelor's level social worker will ever have this and and for master's level folks equally as well i mean this is i mean when a family comes to you and we probably work and they have children who may be living in a car i mean how quickly do they want to get them out of that car right  if and knowing that they may be staff to spend another night or anyhow if we don't act fast you know so you know when it comes to working literally homeless families i wouldn't be surprise of right now it's friday afternoon one of my staff improve i think that people or or come together and really care about on this prevention and homelessness this morning i was at our continuing care meeting through the suncoast partnership and homelessness leads and it was just a great opportunity for the community to come forward at that meeting she talked it was it was an annual board meeting and they did some review  the year look like and what the last ten years look like and people have this community has grown right and that and in terms of your staff at the jewish family and children's services what is your what is the staffing that you have you know are building strong families program we see suits against combination prevention homes and we have six so she works there six case managers and i think they're all actually social workers in our own math program we have it's a bigger staff you know we have some coordinators we have a director we have a coordinator we have three peer mentors we have six case managers and because we are not only in sarasota we're manatee we're in charlotte and desoto county so it's a bigger stretch and and so you have a pretty large effort to work on do you measure success that we can really i mean i think the national benchmarks include things like how quick and somebody get into a house if they're homeless and right now the veterans administration so increase there is instead it may take like ninety days we were we're in gauged in a process called functional zero which is that homelessness for veterans and basically means you have as many people going who are who are entering into music homeless who are ex in their own homes and we're quickly approaching that and one of the statistics we look at is what's the link the time and our link the time right now on average is eighty seven days whether it's prevention or story somebody who's literally homeless you just blew me away with that concept of functional zero do you want to explain that functional zero is the term that  used to say a community has reached the point where there is no homelessness for veterans right and basically as i said it means that we're  number or more people then coming into the community and right we started out a few months ago with needing to having one hundred seventy six veterans who need or that are in households that needed to ounce today we have seventy five and before the end of this month we're going to be at sixty year low and sixty years our magic number in this community because that's the number of supported placements that the veterans in ministration have so if we have if we have identified everybody we have through our partner organizations through the use of the o system h m i asked means homeless management information system very good and so what would you explain what that homeless management information system is the homeless management information system is a system that created to be able to track and identify individuals who who are provided housing services that are funded through their sources and some communities expanded to even sources beyond but you are required if you are receiving federal funds in certain housing programs to put that information and so in the case of our our pro all of our program every one of the people that we families that we work with who will allow us to because people will it is perhaps this will be in the house and system and what it does is it not only allows us to track the services but it allows our partners to see what's happening with the families as well right which is extremely important it comes to coordinating care right and coordinating care is critical and making sure the programs are successful in the making sure community is success you know together to get the value of us being able to do different party organizations to see the resources what worked what didn't work or how resource it's it's it's the phone book of services and you know it's just it's how people get to know what sort of services and who provides them and so it somebody has their own personal emergency they can call two one one and get help yes directly themselves and right now they are housed over at the united way you know they're billed rhetoric crossed street from here right and you know they the wonderful part of the internet and what is your budget for all of this these housing services our budget for both housing programs is slightly over two million dollars and what would you say per household you spend to get people into housing or perform services if you just take the average number that i talked about for the last year you know it's around twenty four hundred dollars to break it out by that's pretty cost effective when you compared to what it costs getting somebody off the street if prevention services as we talked about or the way to go and that why are organizations core mission in housing is with homeless prevention and where do you find the housing we have people we we have worked with when the words like said since two sent staff into neighborhoods to knock on doors to ask whether or not they knew anybody else we recently had a landlord appreciation day where we invited forty but me about twenty landlord showed up and those little more are dedicated to helping us find more housing we are continually outreach in the community to find housing and you have people talk about affordable housing or  no i don't know i don't want to get into that debate but i will say we're housing people and we're not doing it through necessarily traditional ways we have to think out of the box you know and hit the street and really ask o neighborhood partners you know do you know anybody now it's called the jewish family and children's services do you have to be jewish to use the service and what percentage of the clients that you serve are actually jewish you know that are actually jewish ten to twenty percent ok so you really serve the community we are what we are a community service and in terms of your donors about ninety percent of our do are jewish and they are happy you know that we are serving the entire community and they're proud to have an investment in our dark community and and how about you do you feel a sense of accomplishment for being involved in this can this kind of effort you know when i one of the happiest days of my professional career is when i came to j of c s in two thousand and  organization the service has been a blessing to me and while i'm sort of planning to in my career i mean this is been one of the most wonderful things in my ability to work in my own community and see the positive results are just amazing and certainly your housing program all of your housing programs have helped people in the community who really needed help and i want to thank you for being here with us today and telling us what the organization that you work with has done for this community thank you for so much for joining us sec commissioner scorner today and learning more about housing programs that are actually operating in our community to help our residents in this community through a continual health care and a jewish family and children's services thank you so much for being