CF Matthew Wagner

Family Promise, an organization that serves families with children who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. Each chapter operates independently and adapts their programming to the needs of their community. The organization keeps families together while they work on getting back on their feet. Funding comes from grants and donations from individuals, churches, and businesses. They have a day center where families work on their goals and a network of churches where families stay overnight. They also provide prevention services and address the mental health impacts of homelessness. The organization serves around 100 to 120 people on a monthly basis. Their program is unique and tailored to each family's situation. They receive referrals from church leaders, other shelters, and service organizations. The pandemic has had a significant impact on mental health, and the organization offers a program to help families deal with the trauma of homelessness. Welcome to this segment of Catholic Focus, I'm Joan Abustinsky, your host, and right now I'm joined by Matthew Wagner, he's the Executive Director of Family Promise of Harrisburg Capital Region. Welcome to Holy Family Radio. Thank you so much for having me, it's great to be here. Well tell us a little bit, I think many of our listeners may not even know about Family Promise, so why don't you tell us a little bit about what it is that you do. Sure, well we are an organization that serves families with children who are experiencing homelessness or who are at risk of being homeless. The local chapter of a national organization has about 200 affiliates, but each of us operate independently. We each have our own board of directors, and the great thing about that is every chapter is able to kind of adapt their programming to the needs in their community. And how long have you been with the organization? I've been here about two and a half years now, and they haven't fired me yet. Well a lot of our listeners, like I said, may not know about, first of all I think it's a problem that a lot of people here in central Pennsylvania don't even know how big a problem it is. Absolutely. So can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, so I think when we think of homelessness in general, you know we think of the guy sitting on the corner with the cardboard sign, you know, we'll work for food or something like that, right? But the reality is there are so many more homeless people that are either living with family, they're staying in a hotel, they're staying in their car, those are what we refer to as the hidden homeless, those that we don't even think of when we think of homeless people. And this is a hard thing, I assume it's hard for adults, but even more of a problem for children and you deal with families a lot of times, right? Yeah, and that's one of the things that I think people don't realize, you know, most shelters are gender based, right? So most shelters are either for women and children or for men. But the way that's defined is a male over the age of 14. So if you have, let's say, a single mom with a 10-year-old and a 14-year-old son, your 14-year-old would have to be at the men's shelter while you're at the women's shelter with your other child. And people don't realize that, you know, a husband and wife who are experiencing homelessness, the husband has to be at one place while the wife and the kids are somewhere else. I mean, it's difficult enough for a family to work out schedules and take care of what they need to when they're together, no less when they're in two different locations. So our program is unique in that it keeps the families together while they're getting back on their feet. What about funding? Where do you get your funding? Well, it's a combination of, we get about 40% of our funding comes from grants, whether it's county funding or private grants, public grants, all of those kind of things. And then the bulk of it is from individuals, churches, businesses that care about their community and want to make a difference. Now when it comes to that, do you find that you get more donations at this time of the year with everyone thinking about donations and goodwill and that kind of thing? I would say that's a fair statement. You know, this is the time of year that people are thinking more about giving back. We have our annual appeal that we kicked off about two weeks ago that we run from the middle of November to the end of January, so this is our big solicitation push right now. But we do things throughout the year to raise awareness and raise money as well. And that's one of those things, a lot of times we forget that people are homeless all the time, not just in December when everyone's thinking about giving back to the community. How many, you say that your program works with families, do you have like a family shelter where you have these people going, how does that work? So we're a little unique, again, in the fact that we have our day center in Camp Hill, which is where the families will be working on their goals, working on finding a job, figuring out child care, arranging transportation, obviously looking for a place to live, doing all of those things. That's also where they get their, you know, they take care of their laundry, we have shower and bath facilities there and all of that, but they don't actually spend the night at our day center. We have a network of churches throughout the area that each take a week at a time, up to four weeks a year, where they will have somebody from the church come pick up the families. We have a 14-passenger van, they'll come pick up the families, take them to the church. You know, all your church ladies love making food, so they'll cook them dinner, they get to have a family meal together, and then we provide them with air mattresses and sheets and blankets and pillows and all that. They'll spend their night at the church, and then they come back to the day center the next day. So the kids will go from there to school, and the parents will work on what they need to do from there. Wow, it sounds like an amazing program, but it sounds complicated to set up. I mean, wow. It can be. It can be. One of our challenges right now is, you know, particularly after the pandemic, a lot of churches lost their volunteers. So finding churches who are able to help us with that has been a challenge. But the churches that we have are fantastic, and it's a great way for a church or an organization to really kind of get into ministry, get into serving the community without having to worry about all of the extra programming and all of that, because we're taking care of all that. Wow. That is amazing. Like I said, a lot of people may not even know, because I think it seems like you've been under the radar for a little bit now. Only now are people finding out about your program. And now that we've been on the air with you, we're going to be household names. That's exactly right. How many families do you typically serve? Yeah. So our shelter program, we can serve up to three families at a time. And the limit for that is the size of the van more than anything else, the 15-passenger van. So we serve three families at a time in our shelter program, but then we also do a lot of prevention services as well. So for example, we are a partner of the United Way, the Capital Region, and the Road to Success program, which is designed to eliminate barriers to jobs that pay a family-sustaining wage. So we have about 50-some folks enrolled in that program right now. Over 80% of those are actively working, which is awesome. We also, in the last year or so, have created some additional, what we refer to as, diversion programs. So if we can help somebody avoid needing shelter, we will do that as well. We have a program that has funds for permanent transportation needs, so getting your car fixed. We have funds for getting caught up on rent or utilities and those kind of things. We even have a program to help with the trauma that's associated with experiencing homelessness. We've got a bridge counseling until they can get into permanent counseling. So we're really trying to be very holistic in addressing the issue across the board. So the reality is we're probably serving 100 to 120 folks on a monthly basis. Our shelter program is a little bit more limited. Yeah, it seems to me that everybody's situation is unique. Oh, absolutely. It makes your program difficult as far as everybody is, it's not a cookie-cutter kind of a program, right? No, we get asked all the time, you know, what is the, you know, why are these families homeless? Well, it could be anything under the sun. It could be, you know, we had a mother who became homeless because her boyfriend decided he wanted another girlfriend and kicked her out. We've had, we had a family that became homeless when their apartment was condemned. They had no control over that, you know, but the landlord wasn't taking care of it and, you know, they were out of a place to live. You know, a lot of times it's a loss of income, you know, they get, you know, we had a woman who had a diagnosis of cancer, had to have a lot of meds, so she had to make a decision. Was she going to pay for her medication or was she going to pay her rent? She's one that we were able to help get caught up on her rent and she was able to avoid homelessness. So when somebody asks me why somebody becomes homeless, I just say yes. The thing is, we're all a paycheck away, maybe two paychecks. I say all the time there, but for the grace of God, go I. Typically, how do you get clients? Yes, it's, you know, we take a lot of referrals from our church leaders will send folks to us. We take referrals from the other shelters in the area. We take other service organizations will refer folks to us. It's just a mix of things. It's word of mouth. It's a little bit of everything. You know, we're typically, our shelter is typically running a waiting list. We have no shortage of clients, unfortunately. Well, what about the mental health situation? Sure. I know in central Pennsylvania right now, we're seeing, well, all over our country, we're seeing an uptick in people who have more and more difficulty with mental health issues, which in the past have never been addressed by anybody. Absolutely. You know, I don't think that we fully realize the impact that the pandemic had on our mental health state in general. And we, you know, as I said before, we have a program that we call our Heads Up program, which is really designed to help families who have experienced homelessness kind of deal with that trauma. We have a certified counselor that will meet with them, provide them with resources and tools and work with them. And it's not designed to be permanent counseling, but, you know, designed to fill in that gap until they can get into permanent counseling. Excellent. Well, thank you for enlightening us about this incredible program that you have. Absolutely. Family Promise of Harrisburg Capital Region. Can you give us your email address and your website so our listeners know where they need to go? Sure. You can email me. It's just Matthew at FamilyPromiseHCR.org. You can also go on our website. It's www.FamilyPromiseHCR.org. Yeah. So HCR stands for Harrisburg Capital Region. Yep. And so you're part of the family promises, the big organization. Yeah. And you're the local kind of chapter of it, right? Exactly. The analogy I always use is we're kind of like McDonald's. We're the local franchise. Yep. Absolutely. Well, listen, thank you very much for spending time with us here at Home and Family Radio. Appreciate it. We'll have to have you back again and give us an update on how things are going with your organization. Sure. That'd be great. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to this segment of Catholic Focus. I'm Joan Ebustinsky, your host. Please listen again next time.