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United Way Funds Restore The Dream Centers Through Sept. 30
April 13, 2011UNITED WAY FUNDS RESTORE THE DREAM CENTERS THROUGH SEPT. 30
Centers Have Already Helped 719 Families Achieve Recovery Goals; Additional Funding Will Focus On 480 Families Whose Cases Remain Open.
NASHVILLE, TN, April 13, 2011—United Way Restore The Dream Centers have helped 719 families recover from the Flood of 2010 and United Way of Metropolitan Nashville’s board of directors has voted to continue funding Restore The Dream Center case management through September 30 in order to assist the remaining 480 families still working with the Restore The Dream network to reach their recovery goals.
Margaret Dolan, United Way of Metropolitan Nashville board chair and vice president of community relations for Ingram Industries, Inc., announced the board’s decision today, praising the collaborative efforts of partner agencies who operated the six centers and the case management workers who are working hand in hand with each of the families to help them reach recovery.
Dolan said this will allow those families affected by the flood to continue the established case management relationships that have been so effective in making progress toward recovery and it will expedite that recovery as much as possible.
“These heroic nonprofit agencies and hard-working professional case workers have been quietly working with almost 1200 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 with their case managers at the centers.
“The ongoing news 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 to bring closure to the 480 cases that remain open,” 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, Conexion Americas in Antioch, and Salvation Army in the Pennington Bend area.
The other three centers in the network operated by Catholic Charities, Matthew Walker Comprehensive Health Centers and 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 $874,000 in establishing and operating the centers for ten months and continued operation of the network through September will require an estimated additional $300,000.
“The work of these Restore The Dream Centers is one of the real bright spots in our city’s recovery effort,” Dolan said.
“The intent in establishing the centers had multiple objectives,” Morton added. “First, we sought to build on a proven structure that did not require building from scratch, so we extended 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 sought to work compassionately with the flood survivors to meet their own plan of recovery. Finally, we committed to serve every family that reached out to us and this decision by the United Way board enables these partner agencies to finish the job they so ably have performed since the flood,” Morton concluded.
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 key 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 Conexion Americas
Bellevue Catholic Charities
Bordeaux Matthew Walker Comprehensive Health Center
Madison Salvation Army
Northwest St. Luke’s Community House
Pennington Bend 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.
