There is a national crisis at hand affecting the future and stability of this country. This crisis of homelessness is marked by a series of paradoxes that characterize the nature of our society, sharing of resources, housing, education, job training, work opportunity, and includes the retention of providers of mental health, homeless and addiction services.
This national, broad-based initiative is dedicated to the goal of ending homelessness. Winning needs to happen on the local level. The Homeless Help Campaign is founded on the principles and action of public education, grassroots organizing and initiates fundraising support for advocacy groups and those actions leading to progressive public policies and legislation. It is founded on the principles that people need affordable housing, livable incomes, health care, education, and protection of their civil rights. The Homeless Help Coalition is composed of a variety of group efforts to address causes of homelessness.
- Homeless advocacy programs cannot keep pace with the dramatic changes wrought by budget cuts and subsequent health provider closings, leaving homeless more susceptible to life threatening injury, illness, mental challenges and unhealthy environments.
- Government sponsored education programs persist in using passive, didactic models of instruction that have been proven faulty and ineffective in changing law enforcement behavior or in improving police encounters.
- The disabled, veterans, illiterate and ex-convicts may have the most difficulty making contact with service providers and therefore need special outreach and aid.
- Many homeless outreach efforts are focused on specialty behavioral health issues (social workers report), despite the fact that the majority of individuals who seek help for mental health or addictive disorders do so through other public agencies and human services such as hospitals and the schools.
- Consumers and families, who play an enormous care-giving role, typically receive no educational support, nor are their unique knowledge and experience used in the training of other families needing help.
- Training programs have not, historically, been designed to teach a set of identified competencies, nor have students and trainees been required to demonstrate their mastery of such competencies in the street.
- Recruitment into the field and efforts to direct public attention has been haphazard.
- Once hired, minimal supervision or mentoring appears to be provided to staff in many systems of homelessness care.
- Well-articulated advancement ladders are largely absent for the field and there is little training available to foster the systematic development of future managers and advocacy leaders even for volunteers.
- Even when effective training is offered, those transitioning from homelessness to the workforce often function poorly in government provider organizations or find those systems thwart rather than support those new skill sets that must be acquired.
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These paradoxes appear to characterize the challenge facing many homeless advocacy groups today and are not unique to specific practice settings or professional competence. The issues before us stand as major barriers to the type of systemic transformation and policy reform envisioned by the New Year Commission in the formation of the Homeless Help Coalition. Part of our project is to "Strengthen Professional Identity in Solving the Challenge of Homelessness in America."
It is our goal to initiate research, combine resources and increase fundraising efforts to achieve a new standard and platform in dealing with this vital issue.
Two organizations joined forces to promote awareness and fundraising action by creating HOMELESS HELP.
The two founding organizations of the HH Coalition are the Friendship Fellowship (FF) and Community Progress (CP). Through their efforts a new Charity Choice Consortium and the Homeless Help campaign are born. It is up to you to help us reach our goals.
Homeless Help will initially focus on the challenges faced within Los Angeles County however, we aim to form a national, interdisciplinary body to help advance the work. Our founders have a 25-year history of efforts to increase public awareness of various social issues. For the past four years, Community Progress has convened various ‘Calls for Collaboration’, which have brought national leaders in the field together to address topics such as neighborhood improvement, best community practice guidelines, education and training, quality services, and cultural competence.
Homeless Help operates under the auspices of Charity Choice, a California non-profit organization comprised of numerous helpful community concerned not for profit organizations. Our mission is to foster the growth and empowerment of advocacy groups and helping them adapt to changing social and economic environments and to promote public awareness and education about the plight of homelessness.
In 2006, the Homeless Help Coalition was started and was incorporated as an independent, private, non-profit organization governed by a Board of Directors under the legal entity Charity Choice under Section 23701d of the California Revenue and Taxation Code and/or federal tax exempt status under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code is a nonprofit PUBLIC BENEFIT corporation. |
