Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Would you like to share an anecdote about how the economic downturn is impacting your organization and/or your organization’s clients?

We asked people to comment as they registered for the Town Hall. See comments below to read what service providers have said.

16 comments:

  1. Community outreach to notify community of the service and also get help in filling food pantry. new rapid rehousing program has allowed us to assit more families. This is a partnership between theapartment owners and families forward. We are starting a new program "Community Cares" to link clients with medical, dental, mental heatlh needs with volunteer medical professionals.

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  2. As an independent grant writer, I work with various small to medium nonprofits. The economic downturn seems to have caused funders to be more directed toward safety net services

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  3. Increased demand and utilization for home delivered meals, case management and non emergency medical transportation. Decrease in client, corporate and foundation donations and grants. The frail elderly throughout Orange County are outliving their resources and this economy over the past two years brings back depression era fears.

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  4. Longer interest lists for new affordable developments. Former home owners on the interest lists. Unemployment compensation primary source of household income. Higher vacancy rates and turnover in 50-60% AMI units as residents lose jobs

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  5. The CalWORKs program at OCC partners with the County Welfare Departments in five neighboring counties. Over the last year, the program has seen HUGE enrollment surges in welfare-eligible students who are attempting to weather the economic downturn and increase their skills and future employability by attending community college. More and more people are experiencing shortages in affordable housing, childcare assistance, and food insecurity.

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  6. This county desperately needs emergency housing.... all the forums in the world are not going to solve the problem. If the county really care instead of just had forums they could make a major dent in the problem if they would just open up an emergency shelter...look at Orlando Florida or any other major city that has emergency shelters...New York for instance has lots of them...why do we have only the Salvation Army?????????

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  7. More people do not have resources for basic needs. This create a bigger demand for emergency food. This creates a greater demand for job development and creation services that are not readily available for low-income populations that lack sufficent educational attainment and skills acquisition for the new work industry. Until the economy improves, what do the poor do to survive as they loose their stable shelter, their children go hungry and their helath deteriorates. We have clients in crisis and who are up a creek with no help in site other than free food. Immigration status is a barrier for many woman who have been abandoned or abused and left to take care of themselves and their child (or children) without a safety-net.

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  8. Yes, we are seeing decline in donations and funding. However we have created a "Social Enterprise" which is a for-profit arm that will help fund our non-profit. We do not want to cut any senior from any of our programs. So, we hope to grow this new venture in the 2010 fiscal year.

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  9. Our homeless prevention agency has been in existence for 21 years. It took us 19 years to provide 30,000 services (food, rental assistance etc.) to as many individuals. In the last TWO years we have jumped to 64,000 services and probably 30% of our clients are educated beyond high school and are former NON-low-income wage earners.

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  10. increase in families needing mental health services - no insurance, few resources

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  11. Do to the constant budget cuts on the disabled community, many of our clients are not getting the help they need. With the afflent areas of orange county it seems that our state legislators do not have to be accountable except to the few and that coming up with inovative ideas to solve any solutions to the poor or disabled community are just not priority items.

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  12. We are seeing more guests at our emergency shelter who have never been there before. We are seeing many more clients come to our Family Service offices for food, rental assistance, and utility assistance - also many new persons who have never accessed our services before. We are seeing more persons who are jobless and have no hope for being employed by the next month. We have changed our criteria for eligibility to incorporate more of those jobless and have increased the amount of funds which we give for rental assisance.

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  13. A lot of residents who had good paying jobs, nice homes and the expectation of continued prosperity are now in the same category as clients whom we have always served in our poverty agency. Their lives have literally fallen apart. We are struggling to serve all of those who qualify for our services.

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  14. We are experiencing a huge increase in phone calls from women that are in need of a mammogram or diagnostic breast health care services due to loss of insurance and reduced services with the state funded Every Women Counts Program.

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  15. Our requests for services have increased dramatically In February of 2009 we had requests from 177 women and children to 305 women and children in February 2010.

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  16. In my specific Program, I have lost four Senior Social Workers that I have been unable to replace, and two major Service Contracts were cancelled. With regard to the terminated contracts, two of the Contract Providers have stepped up with their own funding for the remainder of the Fiscal Year to sustain a large portion of the services previously funded by the Contracted services

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