Tag: Social Work

Looking for Housing or Affordable Healthcare? Your Local Library Is Here to Help

Posted on by robbie

Leah Esguerra is a licensed family and marriage therapist, but instead of heading to an office every day to soothe couples’ marital tensions, she reports to the San Francisco Public Library. There she roams the stacks, looking for patrons who might need her help. Some of these patrons are homeless and are looking for a safe place to stay for the day. Others are actively looking for resources, such as showers and food, or just a place to warm up for a while.
No matter their need, Esguerra embraces them all. “Public libraries are sometimes called the last bastion of democracy,” she says. “It’s a community living room where everyone is welcome.”
Esguerra is the nation’s first official library social worker. She was hired by the San Francisco Public Library in 2009, after the collapse of the nation’s economy wiped out jobs and made housing unaffordable for many people. “The housing crisis will always [be a problem here], because there’s not enough houses for people who are on a limited income, are marginalized or are a challenge to house because of mental health and substance abuse issues,” she says.
Esguerra had been working for San Francisco’s Department of Public Health in a community mental health clinic when the city’s public library system reached out to the agency, looking for ways to address the issue of patrons who appeared to be homeless. Some of these library goers had obvious substance abuse or mental health problems, and some were using the library’s bathrooms to wash up or take a nap. Other patrons were aggravated by their presence, and the library staff didn’t feel equipped to handle the situation. The Department of Public Health asked Esguerra if she wanted to try working at the library with people who might need social-service support there, and she agreed to give it a go.
Almost a decade later, Esguerra is still at the main branch of the San Francisco library. And as the number of homeless patrons has ticked up, so has her staff — Esguerra currently oversees a team of seven people who are employed as part-time health-and-safety associates, all of whom have some experience with homelessness themselves.
Jennifer Keys is one such associate, having struggled with mental health issues in the past. Now she works for Esguerra and recently got certified as a peer specialist in mental health. “To be homeless is a full-time job,” says Keys. “The housing crisis here is awful, and the prerequisite for [subsidized] housing is very high.” Nevertheless, her team has helped 116 people find permanent housing since the social-work program began.  
Similar library-outreach programs have sprung up in other big cities over the past few years, among them Denver, New York, Philadelphia and San Diego, as well as in smaller communities like Pima County, Arizona, and Georgetown, Texas. “We take pride in being the first in the country, and we’re even considered a national model and blueprint for many other libraries,” Esguerra says. “A lot of times when other libraries start their programs, they call San Francisco.”

Library 2
Nonprofit Lava Mae works with the San Francisco Public Library to offer free showers and other amenities to the homeless.

Monique le Conge Ziesenhenne, director of library and community services in Palo Alto, California, and current president of the Public Library Association, agrees that the number of libraries that offer outreach programs is on the rise, though she says that the Public Library Association doesn’t track that data. (CityLab reported in 2016 that 24 public libraries across the country offer outreach services.)
“I think what’s really interesting is, in the face of shrinking budgets from every sector of local government, libraries have had to look for creative ways to solve whatever issues are facing them,” Ziesenhenne says. “And as libraries have become more responsive to community needs, it’s interesting how libraries have become community connectors too.”
Maurice Freedman, a former president of the American Library Association, echoes that sentiment. “Libraries are the great democratic equalizer, as anyone can just walk in and sit down,” he says. “It’s the only public service agency that’s not interested in your name and address.”
Not all libraries that employ social workers cater solely to homeless patrons. The Richland Public Library in Columbia, South Carolina, hired a part-time social worker when the Affordable Care Act was introduced in 2013, and people started coming in with questions about different healthcare plans. That part-time employee was soon overwhelmed, and Sharita Moultrie was hired when the branch decided they needed a full-time social worker who specialized in healthcare issues.

“Libraries are the great democratic equalizer. It’s the only public service agency that’s not interested in your name and address.”

— Maurice Freedman, former president of the American Library Association

“There was a great need in the community to be able to sit down one-on-one and talk [to an expert on healthcare], to find options tailored to them,” Moultrie says. “We found that in addition to people needing info about the market, some people also needed help with signing up for food stamps, housing or getting bus tickets so they could look for jobs. If they come through our doors, we do our best to help them.”  
Patrick Lloyd is the community resources coordinator at the public library in Georgetown, Texas, a small city about 30 miles north of Austin. He was hired in 2015 when his boss noticed an increase in homeless patrons and people coming in “seeking answers to questions about things that lie outside the library.” In the case of Georgetown, its population essentially doubled over the past decade, Lloyd says, pushing it from “rural” to “urban” on the 2010 census, and so with that came “big city issues” for a place that doesn’t have its own shelter system or reliable public transportation. So the library stepped into the gap, providing patrons with information on everything from hiring a lawyer to earning a GED. The library also loans out bicycles, hosts live music events and has a “mobile library” for patrons who have mobility issues.
“People come in and have questions about books or computers, they ask a librarian,” says Lloyd. “But if they have questions about ESL classes or a low-cost attorney, I help them.”
In Pima County, Arizona, the local library faced a different issue: People who needed medical attention. So instead of a social worker, they hired registered nurses. “Pima is in a rural part of Arizona where it’s difficult to get access to health care,” Esguerra says. That’s not an issue in San Francisco, she adds, as there is a free medical clinic right across the street from the library.
The San Francisco library has partnered with organizations like Lava Mae, which brings buses outfitted with free showers to the library every week, and they also organize a “pop-up village” every two months where people can get access to resources like free dental care, glasses and the like.
“It’s all about our community, and right now our community is in need,” Keys says. “So we let people know that they have some place to go.”

Serving Victims on the Rez

Posted on by robbie

Domestic violence has long plagued the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. But recent advancements in oil and gas drilling have brought an influx of new workers, and as the population around the reservation has grown, so too have the rate of assaults. For some family members — such as Matthew Lone Bear, whose sister, Olivia, disappeared in 2017 — the search for a missing victim means scouring the massive, roughly 1-million-acre reservation. It can often leave loved ones feeling hopeless.
That’s where TAT Victim Services comes in. The organization works with Fort Berthold’s tribal members, known as the MHA Nation, in dealing with domestic and sexual violence, human trafficking, elder abuse, and missing or murdered people on the reservation. By hosting events to raise awareness, providing survivors with safe shelter, and assisting in the opening of missing-persons cases, TAT helps tribal members in need.
Watch the video above to see the work TAT Victim Services is doing on the Fort Berthold Reservation to help families like Lone Bear’s.

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Editor’s note: Some faces and names in the video have been obscured to protect the privacy of the people involved.

The High-Tech Way Foster Youth Are Safeguarding Their Records (And Their Memories, Too)

Posted on by robbie

Florida’s child welfare system shuttled Jay Schad to a new home every of couple months — roughly 25 placements in all. (He lost the exact count.) The most disruptive move sent him to a group home in Tallahassee, two hours east of Panama City, his hometown, and plopped him into a new high school. Already a month behind his classmates, the freshman attempted to make friends by trying out for the football team. But with many of his records back in Panama City, including his latest physical exam, the coaches couldn’t let him take the field. Eventually, Schad got the go-ahead from a local doctor and started playing. But the setback made him feel, as he says, “let down by the system.” Hadn’t the 14-year-old been through enough with his mother’s meth addiction, his father’s violence and dozens of destabilizing moves to have to worry about his personal papers?
Record-keeping, a seemingly bureaucratic task, poses a huge challenge for the nation’s 428,000 foster youth. Already struggling to keep up with their peers, these adolescents might not realize the need to preserve their important documents until it’s too late. Even if a diligent social worker does compile a binder, it might be lost in a hectic move, and in some states, there are extra hurdles for a teen who’s aged out of the system. This means most applications — whether for financial aid, a new job or housing — can be stymied simply because documents are missing.
Cloud-based technology, however, might have an answer for these teens. My JumpVault, a virtual storage locker, allows a foster kid to upload and protect their essential files, like a birth certificate, medical history and school transcripts. Developed by Five Points Technology Group (FPTG), a business headquartered in the Tampa suburb of Bradenton, Fla., and funded by the state, My JumpVault currently has about 7,000 users. The digital records it holds, maintained securely behind several layers of authentication, won’t disappear like hard copies might.
Former foster youth played a large role in building My JumpVault. In 2009, two 19-year-old former foster kids led a statewide campaign to streamline access to Florida’s child welfare records. (Previously, emancipated youth needed a judge’s order to see their case file.) After successfully pushing a bill through the legislature, they started to question what access truly meant. Even though they’d won the legal right to look at their papers, did adolescents truly have access if the process of obtaining a copy was so difficult? That’s when the young men — Thomas Fair, now a member of the design team, and Mike Williams, an assistant product manager — signed on with FPTG to advise the team behind My JumpVault and help code the nascent app.
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Accessible by desktop or smartphone, an email address is all a teen needs to sign up for the service. Once they’ve locked the account with a password, they might log in to scan an important document they’ve just received or to locate an image, like Schad did eight months ago when applying for a waiter job at a restaurant. He’d misplaced his social security card, and his new manager told him he couldn’t clock in until he found it. Schad pulled up his electronic copy, and luckily, the boss accepted it.
To further ease the process, a couple of agencies recently partnered with FPTG to store files directly on My JumpVault’s servers. For example, Sunshine Health, the state’s Medicaid provider, lists a kid’s prior hospital visits and prescription medications. Soon, My JumpVault could integrate with the court system to track hearing dates and with local schools to keep report cards. “Tactically, it frees caseworkers up from having to provide documents over and over again in hard copy, and it puts youth in a better position for independence,” notes Chris Pantaleon, the company’s business development director.
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In addition to vital records, one of My JumpVault’s unique features provides storage space for memories. Because foster children might have only one or two pictures of their birth parents, storing photos is the best way to preserve a sense of self. Without these keepsakes, “You don’t understand who you are,” says Williams, who knows the feeling firsthand. “It’s like having no identity.” That’s why they encourage users to add pictures, certificates and awards. Even if a foster kid is relocated to another home, one whose walls might be covered with family portraits, he can take comfort in his own background and family roots, too.
Another powerful feature, which Fair pushed to include within the app, is a series of guides to help foster youth navigate difficult situations. These worksheets might list the names of all service providers in a metro area, provide instructions on applying for food stamps or explain the types of questions employers ask in an interview.
Schad knows there are plenty of issues still plaguing the foster care system. But at least with My JumpVault’s storage in the cloud, those kids don’t have to worry about whether paperwork might hold them back.

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This article is part of the What’s Possible series produced by NationSwell and Comcast NBCUniversal, which shines a light on changemakers who are creating opportunities to help people and communities thrive in a 21st-century world. These social entrepreneurs and their future-forward ideas represent what’s possible when people come together to create solutions that connect, educate and empower others and move America forward.