Coalition makes strides in helping families
Feb. 19—The Care Portal has been operational for just over two months but has already helped several Dickinson County children.
The Care Portal was one of the Dickinson County CARES Coalition's first projects. It provides a way for people who have an urgent need for their children to get hooked up with area churches, which can help.
Tom Schwartz, CARES Coalition facilitator, said six requests for such things as bed, bedding, a chair, and utility assistance helped 12 children in Dickinson County. There are five churches signed up on the portal but more from all over the county are sought.
"We just met via Zoom with Catrina (Kennedy, Care Portal regional director) to talk about how things are going," Schwartz said. "She said that she's been pleasantly surprised with how well we got started. Neighbor to Neighbor has been a good referral source for different things that families are needing and so far we've been meeting and all of the needs. The churches, and different people in the community have been donating those items that are needed by families — that's the way it's supposed to work."
During the CARES Coalition's Jan. 30 meeting participants learned of other donations, which are going toward the group's goal of having a resource webpage. The plan for the webpage is for it to be a comprehensive source of information to help people connect with organizations and services to meet myriad of needs.
A donation of $4,600 came in from an unnamed source. Tim and Brenda Holm contributed $1,000 and the Christmas fundraiser raised $2,600.
"This money ... will allow us to continue to move forward on making the resource webpage for Dickinson a reality in the future," Schwartz said.
After the success of the fundraiser, he said he anticipates it will become an annual event.
"I'm sure we will be doing it again next year and we will refine it because we've been through it once now and know what to do a little bit better," he said.
The coalition is also on track to start the first Abilene Hearts Core Community class in the spring. The original plan was for the program to begin late last year, but organizers pushed back the start date in to give them more time to have all the details worked out.
Patterned after the Herington Hearts Core Community, the Abilene program aims to help families move out of poverty.
Kylie Kilmer has been hired as the resource coordinator for the program and a coach and a facilitator was hired.
The United Methodist Church is on board to house the program when it begins and meals will be provided by the Community Meal Program on Monday nights.
As CARES Coalition members move forward with their initial goals, they are also looking at other ways they can facilitate change and help Dickinson County residents.
One discussion at the Jan. 30 meeting was about the need for childcare, especially with the recent closure of Cornerstone Day Care Center.
"There's always a need for daycare but it wasn't on our top burner," Schwartz said. "One thing we talked about is maybe the Dickinson County Economic Development Corporation and businesses can get together to and look at this because we're trying to bring more businesses to the county. If you bring more people in, one of the first things they ask is about daycare. It is a serious issue that needs to be looked at."
In a few months, when school lets out for the summer, the need is going to grow exponentially.
"It's a big problem just having daycare and then families have to pay for the daycare," he said. "It's a big issue that's one I'm going to try to tackle, but everybody needs to work together on that. It's not just something that the CARES Coalition will be able to handle themselves. It's a big issue that needs to be thought of by the cities in the county, the county commission, the Economic Development Corporation — it's going to take all of those working together to come up with a solution to meeting the needs of childcare in the county."
