Your Questions Answered February 19, 2018 Due to time constraints - PDF document

Your Questions Answered February 19, 2018 Due to time constraints during the first two public presentations on OneHeart: A Place for Hope & Healing in January, we were unable to address all of the questions about the proposed transformation campus submitted by audience members at that time. Below you will find those questions organized by topic with answers provided by project manager Charity Doyle and the RCCI team. OneHeart Housing/Services With limited capacity at OneHeart, how will those on the waitlist for housing at OneHeart be served? • Essentially, people on the waitlist would be living with the world as it is today – providers would work with them, as they are now, until campus housing is available. By consolidating and removing some of the barriers to accessing services, providers will be able to serve more people at OneHeart regardless of whether or not all their clients live on the campus. Also, not everyone who would benefit from consolidated services is going to need to live on the campus. Will there be a time limit someone can stay at OneHeart? • The recovery team working with each individual will be able to identify if a person is not motivated to move to the next step. Many eyes will be on each enrollee, which will help to prevent people from staying there indefinitely. With that being said, some individuals will only need a little bit of help and will only require a short-term stay; others will have a whole array of things they need to work on. Their life might be fractured in multiple areas, and that will take time. With the team recovery approach, all of those pieces will be gauged and monitored, and we’re going to treat people as individuals and take it case by case. There won’t be a hard time limit for staying on campus if someone is really working on their plan. Will mental health services be provided? • Yes. We expect multiple agencies that employ mental health professionals to play a role on the campus. Do you see churches being involved? If so, how do see that happening? • Churches and other faith-based organizations are already getting involved in the planning process for the campus. Once the campus is open, religious services will be welcomed as

scheduling and space permits. Churches are also currently involved in advocacy work – so it’s not something that should happen; it is happening now. Will there be a church on campus? • Space permitting, there will be a spiritual center on campus which churches will be able to use and where other spiritual activities will be able to occur. Would OneHeart be a place for intoxicated subjects on cold nights? • The Pennington County Community Restoration Center next door will have safe beds for intoxicated individuals on cold nights. For those who are sober but not in OneHeart housing, the Cornerstone Rescue Mission would also be an option. If Cornerstone decides not to join the campus, can there be a second new mission that is willing to join the movement to transform our community and the people in it? • If Cornerstone decides not to join but is still providing emergency shelter, we would choose not to duplicate that service. If Cornerstone dissolved and there were a need for an emergency shelter, we would try to find a solution. How do you plan to work with the Cornerstone Mission and WAVI? • We anticipate they will be participants on this campus. Both organizations are actively engaged in the planning process with RCCI staff. Will there be collaboration with the Salvation Army? • The Salvation Army has met with RCCI and collaboration opportunities were discussed. Can youth under 18 who have been emancipated utilize OneHeart services? • We hope so. We are currently exploring what we will need to do to accommodate not only emancipated youth but also unaccompanied youth. Do you have a resource plan to address the diverse population that will come through your doors? Specifically, what are you doing to address the needs of the LGBTQ+ community? If you do not have a specific plan, are you open to working with LGBTQ+ community leaders to develop one? • The campus is being designed to be all-inclusive and to incorporate flexible space to accommodate various subpopulations within the spectrum of OneHeart guests. While we are many months away from developing a plan for this specific subpopulation, it is on the list of issues to address. The brochure states that the people who enroll on the OneHeart campus would have to be on an income plan, a housing plan, and be clean and sober. Does this mean people who receive services have an income, a plan to move into a home and no substance disorders? • No. It means they have to be actively engaged in a plan that either produces or will produce

income or the equivalent benefits. They will need to have a plan to eventually move off the campus. And they may have substance disorders, but they would need to be clean and sober to reside on-campus and be receiving some kind of counseling or treatment. What is an income plan? What is a housing plan? • In other models we’ve researched, income plans include anything from taking classes to have better job opportunities upon graduation, to job skills training and assistance in finding a job. An income plan is going to look very different for a young, able-bodied person than it will for an elderly person or a person with disabilities. The plan needs to match the person, so there will be a wide variety of income plans, as there will be a wide variety of housing plans. • A housing plan means you come to the OneHeart campus motivated to move. The campus is not a stopping point; a person doesn’t get to stay indefinitely. A housing plan could be waiting for housing to become available that has already been identified for a client, or being actively engaged in looking – based on one’s income plan or based on the skillsets a person is trying to acquire – and finding appropriate housing. • Go to the end of this document (pages 9-10) to read real income and housing plans developed by guests at San Antonio’s Haven for Hope. How do you verify an income plan? • The teams who work directly with clients will know what is a realistic income plan for a client. How do we guarantee a client is actually working to achieve the goals laid out in that income plan? If a person’s plan includes a higher education component, the team will be able to verify that the client is enrolled in classes. If it includes employment, employment verification would be required. Application-wise, there are ways to validate those efforts. With a whole team of people working with these individuals, it would be difficult for clients to manipulate the system. Also, current providers are the ones who will be referring people to the campus for the most part. They already know the people they’re serving. They know what the issues are; they know what the tendencies are; they know what to watch for. Could you not combine the goals of the OneHeart transformation campus with the Pennington County Community Restoration Center? • First, the two entities will serve different people. Pennington County’s Community Restoration Center will focus on those in acute crises, as well as those who are not seeking services, but need a safe place to sleep at night. Second, while the two centers are not under the same roof, they will be directly next door to each other so, in essence, the efforts will be combined by proximity. How will you measure success? • That will largely be up to the providers to determine; however, one of the ways to gauge success is to see people living independent lives, and we would follow up with them for a year after their graduation from the OneHeart campus to see if that level of independence – able to provide for their own needs and remain in stable housing – is still in place. Any problem has multiple solutions. What alternate solutions have been considered?