In my last blog post, I spoke about CANI’s mission and the various aspects of what it all means. I wanted this time to delve further into our philosophy to reach every family and individual who lives in poverty and provide services in a timely, coordinated manner, so that they can leave poverty behind forever.
CANI serves over half of all the people in poverty in Northeast Indiana every year. Because of this, we are one of the few organizations that can have a true impact on our area’s poverty rates. The trick, of course, is having the system and resources in place to help move all of these families out of poverty for good. That is our challenge, but that is exactly what we’re trying to do.
What does this system look like? Typically a family comes to us for help with a single issue. For example: they need help with their utility bills, or a housing situation, or child care. But what we know is invariably these families have more than one issue they’re facing. If they can’t pay their utility bills, they likely have issues with other bills as well, or they are struggling in their employment situation, or are lacking a certain level of education. They may even be dealing with domestic violence or addictions issues. The point is:
Every family is unique, but almost always, their situation is more complicated than a single program or service will solve.
Our goal then is to build a system that no matter who comes to us or for what reason, we take the time to fully assess the family’s situation, not just their “presenting need” (the reason they came to us.) This process is undertaken together with the family, so that both parties see a more complete picture of the situation.
The key piece then is the next step. When multiple issues are identified we want to be able to provide services to families that meet all those needs, and in a timely manner. Timeliness is crucial. I often think about the finger in the dam analogy here. Families can fix one “hole” at a time, but if they can’t fill all the holes at once, the dam continues to leak and eventually gives way.
And when we speak about services to meet all needs, we’re working on that in two ways. First, and the most desirable, is to create truly integrated relationships with our partners within the community who can provide needed services. By “integrated” we mean, not simply giving a name and number to call, but actually providing access to the service, perhaps even delivering our partners’ service ourselves.
The second way is to add services that CANI itself delivers where it is determined that there are gaps in our community. (In future blog entries, I’ll explain more fully our concept of what the spectrum of family needs is, and more specifically illustrate our collaborative efforts with partners.)
We believe our concept is a good one, but our challenge - why this isn’t fully in place today - is that all this takes resources. Our grants and funding often are constructed in a manner that provides barely enough funding to simply deliver one service, certainly not to provide for the extra time we need to spend with a family to make this concept work.
But we are working every single day to develop those resources and make this system a reality. When we do, we’ll have even more impact on families and our community than we do today.
When you examine what makes people happy it is not 'things' - it is a sense of belonging to something greater than oneself. It is connections with other people. How can those of us who do have the means help people who have limited resources? What would the world look like if everybody made decisions about how, what, and where they spent their money with a focus on the greater good in mind?
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