Written By: Lauren Swift, Development Coordinator at Friends Association
Friends Association prevents homelessness by transforming lives, empowering families, and strengthening our community. We believe that everyone deserves a home. Since 1822, our mission has been focused on homelessness and housing instability. While our programs have evolved over the years to meet the needs of our families, we remain committed to our mission to provide programs and services to prevent homelessness and promote the independence of families with children. Using the Housing First model, combined with our trauma-informed, two generation approach, we focus on keeping families together during times of crisis. We are unique in that we accept families however they come, be that single parent, two parent, or multi-generational households. We provide prevention programs that keep families stably housed, emergency housing for families who have lost their homes, housing resource navigation services, and skilled case management to increase families’ ability to sustain their housing if they must relocate. Since the majority of the families in our housing stability case management program are in Coatesville, the Alliance for Health Equity has become a crucial partner in our mission to prevent homelessness.
The Seed-And-Scale grant matches donations dollar for dollar by the Alliance for Health Equity. This not only increased the funding we received, but it also helped promote Friends Association to the community. In addition, the Alliance for Health Equity hosted lunches and gatherings among the grantees, creating a sense of support within the community.
The Seed-And-Scale grant has allowed us to offset the costs of one case manager’s salary on our team of four. This has greatly increased our capacity to serve families in the community. We have incorporated life skills training into our emergency shelter as well. To date, we have served 246 families in our case management program and provided life skills training and 58% of our participants are children. To watch our full impact update video, click HERE.
One of our success stories is James*, a single dad of four boys. Before coming to Friends Association, James and his boys were evicted from their apartment. They had to sleep in a storage unit, and James’ mental health was affected negatively. Once James was referred to Friends Association, he and his case managers started working on life skills. Our case managers helped him explore various mental health treatment options. Friends Association also helped James secure a housing voucher to ease the financial burden. Once James started into his mental health treatment, he was able to work with his case managers on job exploration and educational opportunities. Today, James and his four boys remain stably housed and James is enrolled to start HVAC school.
Along with success stories, there were also lessons learned. Our case managers see many families experiencing multigenerational poverty, this is exacerbated by a general lack of basic life skills. The lack of life skills prevents housing stability. Those experiencing homelessness do not always have the access or resources to learn the life skills to become stably housed, thus the cycles of poverty. We have learned how important it is for all staff at Friends Association to be advocates for our families and to educate the community on issues of homelessness and housing stability.
As we enter a new fiscal year, we would like continued collaboration among Friends Association, AHE, and the other grantees. We depend on our community partners to advocate for access to life skills training, as that helps families achieve independence and housing stability.
At the beginning of July, Friends Association launched a new strategic plan. This includes our new mission statement as well as refined fundraising, donor cultivation, and donor retention strategies. These new strategies, along with funding from generous grants like the Seed-and-Scale, will allow us to continue to provide case management and life skills training to even more families in the community. Together, we can better Coatesville.