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Community Celebrates Restore The Dream Centers’ Success; Focuses on Remaining Flood-Impacted…
April 26, 2011COMMUNITY CELEBRATES RESTORE THE DREAM CENTERS’ SUCCESS; FOCUSES ON REMAINING FLOOD-IMPACTED FAMILIES.
NASHVILLE, TN, April 26, 2011—Leaders in the corporate and philanthropic community gathered tonight to recognize United Way’s Restore The Dream Centers partnership, which has served 1,199 families since opening early last summer.
Mayor Karl Dean and Congressman Jim Cooper attended the celebration hosted by AT&T Tennessee at its downtown headquarters to say “thank you” to employees and volunteers of The Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, St. Luke’s Community House, Conexión Américas, and Matthew Walker Comprehensive Health Centers for their work in helping 719 families achieve recovery after last year’s flood.
Margaret Dolan, United Way of Metropolitan Nashville board chair and vice president of community relations for Ingram Industries, Inc., praised the collaborative efforts of the partner agencies that operated the six centers and the case management workers who, to date, have worked hand-in-hand with individuals and their families to help those families reach their recovery goals.
“These heroic non-profit agencies and hard-working professional case workers have been quietly working with almost 1,200 families whose lives were disrupted by the flood,” Dolan said. “The good news is that 719 of those cases are now closed, meaning the individuals have achieved the recovery goals they established for themselves. The ongoing reality is that there is still work to be done and our United Way is committed to funding the compassionate and efficient work of this network through September 30 to bring closure to the 480 cases that remained open in our most recent assessment,” she continued.
To accomplish the work that remains, United Way of Metropolitan Nashville will focus its energy and financial resources at St. Luke’s Community House in Northwest Nashville, Conexión Américas in Antioch, and The Salvation Army in the Pennington Bend area. The other three centers in the network operated by Catholic Charities, Matthew Walker Comprehensive Health Centers and The Salvation Army will still participate in the recovery work, though operation of those centers will be consolidated with the three remaining centers.
Gregg Morton, president of AT&T Tennessee and vice chair of the United Way of Metropolitan Nashville board, said the uniqueness of the approach by all agencies represents the highest form of collaboration and partnership. This planned consolidation of the six locations into three sites will allow United Way to scale the network to gain maximum operating efficiency and momentum over the next five months.
United Way of Metropolitan Nashville invested $559,000 in establishing and operating the centers for the first six months. United Way received $315,000 from the Metro Disaster Response Fund for the first quarter of 2011. Continued operation of the network through September will require an estimated additional $300,000 which the United Way of Metropolitan Nashville board of directors approved on April 7.
“Creation of the United Way Restore The Dream Centers served multiple objectives,” Morton added. “First, we built on a proven structure that did not require building from scratch, extending the proven Family Resource Center model that our United Way and its partners use so effectively to meet other social service needs.” “Second, we had a bias toward moving every dollar donated to United Way for flood purposes out to the front lines and into people’s lives as rapidly as possible. We work compassionately with each flood survivor to meet his or her own plan of recovery. We believe that by September, these partner agencies will substantially finish the job they so ably have performed since the flood,” Morton concluded.
BACKGROUND
Immediately after the flood in May 2010, United Way of Metropolitan Nashville assembled expertise from United Way organizations in New Orleans and South Florida to learn from other major disaster recovery experiences. The primary lesson from that five-day engagement was that formal case management is the key to recovery. Formal case management has four essential elements—accurate assessment of needs of the individual or family; determination of and access to all available resources that can meet those assessed needs; working together with the client family to define a plan that will get the family to a point of reasonable recovery; and finally walking the family through all the steps in the plan. Applying intelligence from a database of more than 25,000 calls received by United Way of Metropolitan Nashville’s 2-1-1 Helpline in the days after the flood, United Way used that data along with information from FEMA, TEMA and the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management to identify areas of greatest impact.
The Family Resource Center platform was adopted and mobilized in sites serving the following impacted neighborhoods:
Neighborhood Lead Partner Agency
Antioch Conexión Américas
Bellevue Catholic Charities
Bordeaux Matthew Walker Comprehensive Health Center
Madison The Salvation Army
Northwest Nashville St. Luke’s Community House
Pennington Bend The Salvation Army
The types of services provided to or accessed by Restore The Dream clients have included financial aid, HVAC, paint and building materials, carpet and flooring, water heaters, household appliances, rent and mortgage assistance, skilled and unskilled volunteer labor, furniture or mattresses, food and water, mental health counseling, tax assistance and more.
For additional information about United Way of Metropolitan Nashville’s response to the flood, visit www.unitedwaynashville.org/nashvilleflood.
