Responding to Crisis in our Anchor Communities

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Communities around the state have been rallying to support young people experiencing housing instability as the COVID-19 outbreak unfolds, and our Anchor Communities are no exception. Anchor Community Core Team meetings have provided a space for communities to strategize around ways to respond to young people’s needs during these difficult times. Check out the strategies Spokane and Walla Walla have implemented to better serve young people:

Spokane

Spokane has an established Youth Action Board (YAB) that informs youth and young adult homelessness work in the community. Following public health guidelines, YAB meetings shifted from being in-person to being online, and the community noticed a decrease in participants. The team knew that without an active YAB, their work could not move forward.

“Our Youth Action Board is critical to ensuring that youth and young adults are represented, empowered, and active participants in local decision-making,” said Cecily Ferguson, our Spokane Anchor Community Initiative Coordinator. “The group informs improvement projects and reduction strategies for the Anchor Community Initiative, and one member sits on our Continuum of Care as a voting member to help shape our homeless services system.”

Spokane set an attendance goal of 10 young people per meeting and created a plan to achieve this goal at a recent Anchor Community Core Team meeting. The team decided to:

  • Create informational materials explaining the YAB to garner interest
  • Team members volunteered to reach out directly to 1-3 young people each to invite them to join the YAB
  • Identify any technological barriers that keep young people from attending these meetings and troubleshoot these barriers

After implementing these action items, two young people joined the meeting for the first time after being referred by community partners. They came prepared to the meeting and were engaged, enthusiastic, and thoughtful in their feedback and conversation, and ended the meeting interested in staying involved. The team will continue their outreach efforts towards the goal of reaching 10 total participants per meeting.

Walla Walla

The LOFT is an under-18 HOPE Center run by Catholic Charities in Walla Walla. As the community’s efforts to house young people amidst the pandemic intensified, shelter beds remained open at The LOFT. The Anchor Community Core Team used their meetings to identify the following barriers and solutions to ensure youth could access these beds:

  • Knowledge that The LOFT remained open – With in-person outreach diminished, the team created electronic flyers to advertise broadly that The LOFT remained open. The flyers were distributed through social media and to partners like schools who remained in contact with youth.
  • The LOFT policies – When our state’s stay-at-home order went in place, The LOFT had to implement more safety measures and secure schedules. The team heard feedback that some youth accessing services found these measures too restrictive. The LOFT decided to implement morning conversations with youth to talk about and adjust the daily schedule in a way that felt more empowering to youth.
  • Direct outreach – The LOFT staff committed to follow up with youth who had previously accessed their services, to check in and provide information about resources and services that remain available.

“School closures, in-person support group cancellations, and limited access to technology are making it harder for youth to stay connected and gain access to resources,” said Samantha Jackle, our Walla Walla Anchor Community Initiative Coordinator. “We want to stay diligent and ready to adapt our outreach and case management efforts based on the needs of youth in Walla Walla County.”

After the team made information available broadly and through partners, the referral rate from DCYF increased. Youth also began to stay longer after The LOFT staff began morning conversations.

Helping Young People Receive the Stimulus Payment

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In a matter of weeks, the COVID-19 outbreak has created the conditions that could lead to a huge influx in our state’s youth homelessness system. A spike in unemployment, an economic downturn, instability in every sense. All this puts young people who’ve worked very hard to secure stable housing at risk of returning to homelessness.

At the same time, this crisis has led society to see that we need to do more to support the most vulnerable people in our communities. The past few weeks have brought on eviction moratoriums, decarceration efforts, a newfound dedication to housing everyone. In this moment of creativity and inventiveness, we need to capitalize on every opportunity to effect the system-level and policy changes that will help us end youth and young adult homelessness.

In the social sector, our organizations’ platforms and voices are one of the tools we have at our disposal to push for change. We’re also responsible for listening to the people we serve, and focus our energies on efforts that will make a meaningful difference in their lives. For us at A Way Home Washington, one of those efforts has been providing young people with information on how to get their federal stimulus payments.

In my recent conversations with young people experiencing housing instability, I’ve heard them say that access to cash would go a long way to help them stay housed right now, and the stimulus payment would give them just that. Many young people who have experienced homelessness have experienced the trauma of dealing with complex systems that weren’t designed for them, and have rightfully lost trust. The young people I talked to had little hope that they’d actually receive the payment. Filling out forms, updating their banking information, making sure the payment came to the right place – all of it felt too overwhelming.

Our stimulus payment social media toolkit

I’ve come across a lot of amazing, detailed guides on the stimulus payment for service providers, like this comprehensive guide from YMCA. I felt a different resource was needed, too – one that could outline the information young people needed in the most straightforward way possible. I also wanted to create something that could be shared directly with young people through the channels they’re already plugged into, like social media. Our in-house communication capabilities and our access to local organizations in the Anchor Communities positioned us to create a stimulus payment social media toolkit and add to the resources that already existed.

Many young people experiencing homelessness have bounced around from place to place, have never had to file taxes, and are now disconnected from schools or service providers that may have helped them complete these types of processes before. All of this leaves them disempowered in the face of this crisis and uniquely positioned to not receive their stimulus payment. The toolkit includes the contact information for local resources in our Anchor Communities, helping connect young people with other support they may need. Many of these resources, like the Youth Engagement Team in Walla Walla and the ACT outreach team in Pierce County, exist in part because of Anchor Community Initiative funding, and now more than ever it’s important for young people to know that these resources are there for them, right in their own community.

If even one young person receives their stimulus payment because they saw the information we provided, it was worth investing time and resources into creating the toolkit. We are living through possibly the biggest upheaval we’ll experience in our lifetime. This moment has taught me the importance of pivoting quickly, intentionally creating space to hear from the people most affected, and decisively stepping into roles where we can be uniquely supportive. There is such a strong connection between our mission to end youth and young adult homelessness and the work of responding to this pandemic, and it is our responsibility as non-profits, as advocates, and as community members to create a society that is always ready to respond to the needs of those furthest from justice.

Help us share the stimulus payment social media posts far and wide! The toolkit includes text for Facebook posts and a set of images, in English and in Spanish.