SRQ Daily Columnist Teri A Hansen is president and CEO of Gulf Coast Community Foundation.

“We’re entering a new stage of how we help families requiring homeless services. It’s not just with our hearts; it’s with our heads. And I think it’s miraculous.”

That’s what Phil Gorelick, vice president for programs at Jewish Family and Children's Service of the Suncoast, said to dozens of his colleagues who work on homeless services at a meeting Thursday at Gulf Coast Community Foundation. Genuine, impactful words from a respected veteran of social services and case management in our community.

The topic on the table was collaborative progress toward building a system of integrated services for homeless families and children in Sarasota County. The next milestone on that long, hard road will be the opening of a North County Emergency Family Haven just over a week from now. Operated by Harvest House Transitional Centers, the Family Haven will act like an “emergency room” for families in crisis who suddenly find themselves homeless. The facility will provide them with emergency shelter while its professional case managers assess their needs and connect them to the right services, across dozens of agencies, to stabilize and improve their situation.

The North County Family Haven was one of 12 recommendations in consultant Robert Marbut’s “action plan” for transforming homeless services in Sarasota County. He called it an “emergency intake portal,” and he urged creation of a similar facility in the southern part of the county. That one will be up and running—in North Port, by Catholic Charities—around January.

For anyone who assumed Marbut’s plan wasn’t progressing, please know that five of his 12 recommendations, in as far as they deal with children and families, will be fully implemented within the next few months:

·        North County Emergency Family Haven (Marbut recommendation #2)

·        South County Emergency Family Haven (#3)

·        Master case management system for children/families (#5)

·        Uniform use of the Homeless Management Information System for “proactive case management” (#6)

·        Targeted program to address seasonal shortages within our region’s food bank (#7) 

Two more important things to know: The Family Haven that we will soon celebrate could not work without the master case managers and the shared database they will use. And a team of seven key agencies that are collaborating to manage family cases, administer the database, and run the portals has done a heroic amount of work to get our community to this point. They include master case management agencies Catholic Charities, JFCS, Harvest House and The Salvation Army (how’s that for diversity?); specialized case managers from Sarasota Family YMCA’s Schoolhouse Link program; and referral and database specialists United Way 2-1-1 of Manasota and Suncoast Partnership to End Homelessness, respectively.

These partners should be commended for their commitment to caring for homeless families and helping them find safe, sustainable homes. A Gulf Coast donor and Board member who has worked with the group from the start put it this way at the end of Thursday’s meeting: “It’ll be like a dream coming true. To bring that together, in a team effort, with organizations that have a lot to handle is just amazing. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

SRQ Daily Columnist Teri A Hansen is president and CEO of Gulf Coast Community Foundation.