This morning kicks off the 25th??? annual Healthcare for the Homeless conference in Kansas City, MO and the event is a first-class affair that folks attending this conference have come to expect from John Lozier and crew. This conference is one of two "must attend" events that folks in the world of homeless services try to make each year (the other being the fabulous National Alliance to End Homelessness conference) because not only are the networking opportunities damned near endless, the quality and selection of workshops and lecture sessions is both broad and comprehensive. That the conference is held this year in Kansas City plays especially well with me, given that rumblings from providers working in what the east and west coast folks sometimes sneeringly refer to as the "flyover" states indicate perceptions of increasingly isolated and out of touch policy formation that doesn't jibe with the realities of life and poverty that are affecting and negatively impacting both client and service agency.
What is working in some of the bigger cities around the country on those coasts is either not working at all in the heartland, or is so challenging to implement that it might as well be asking providers to take people experiencing homelessness directly into their own homes as a way to end homelessness in their cities and towns.
Multiple reasons abound for this, including abject poverty within the provider community, ignorance about implementation and the systemic factors that contribute to homelessness, little or no training opportunities for direct service staff, siloed services with little or no agency collaboration and/or integration, frustration with community pushback that demoralizes the workforce, apathetic political involvement (if they're lucky enough to have political involvement), to name just a few. And while these challenges are certainly not restricted to folks in the flyover states, the situation appears to be pervasive in them.
Pockets of excellence appear, to be sure, but often the fight to reach excellence is so damned tough that it's hard to ask those examples to help lead others, although those individuals often jump at the chance. And of course, what works in Gary, Indiana may not work at all in Odessa, MO., so it renders the collaboration moot and ineffective even if it could happen.
We know homelessness is complex and as such, a cookie-cutter approach doesn't work so well. But as we begin to dig down into the idea of scalability, we're beginning to see some patterns of successful program pieces emerge. I think we're still a long way off from being able to promulgate generic approaches that bridge the challenges in a way that makes the chances of an agency's success in ending homelessness while treating mental illness and addiction higher, but that we're even looking for them as the precursor to an integrated approach is a giant step forward in the world of behavioral health.
Conferences like the Healthcare for the Homeless, the National Alliance to End Homelessness, the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, and a host of other smaller but no less important events occurring each year bring us all together to talk about these challenges, barriers, and ways of overcoming them. This is critically important because for the remainder of every year, we return to our communities and often operate in isolation. While efforts are being made in earnest to change this as well, the fact remains that for much of each year, many do operate almost in a vacuum. The cumulative trauma of providing services to those on the streets, coupled with the feeling of being alone and unsupported in the work we're doing, and constantly struggling for every penny in order to perform the most basic and rudimentary functions of the job wear heavily on the morale and chip away at one's initiative to do outstanding work. Subsistence wages, community scorn, and the constant battle to find sustaining funding round out the globe of gloom for those working in this field, and it's hard to remain optimistic and hopeful for clients and colleagues when it's a constant battle for survival and enough gas to get to work each week.
Add to this a perception that others seem to be enjoying substantial success, support and political will and you begin to understand the reasons for the rumblings of discontent within the flyover states. To those of you who continue the war against homelessness in these locales, know some of us hear you, loud and clear. Take at least a little comfort in the fact that you have an increasingly louder voice that reminds those on the coasts and in the big cities that all is not well in the many places they've never heard of.
To be continued....believe it.
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