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1 Social Service Program Development Briana Nelsen SWK:5008 Macro Social Work Practice with Groups Capella University Dr. Rhonda Waddell

2 Social Service Program Development Homelessness in America has always been a significant issue and continues to grow with every passing year. There are many reasons why an individual or a family finds themselves homeless. Those reasons range from unemployment, escaping domestic violence, mental health, substance abuse, even divorce, or even based off where an individual lives. It has been observed that the bigger the city, the bigger the homeless population seems to be, for example, California and New York. “The United States has twelve states with more than 10,000 people experiencing homelessness, including Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington,” (Red Nose Day, 2021). The cost of living, food, and grocery prices increase, and unemployment numbers continue to rise as jobs are not providing enough hourly wages or salary to keep up with the demands of everyday expenses. Seeing that many individuals find themselves homeless due to substance abuse or mental illness shines a light on the fact that the programs and resources that are meant to be available to these individuals are not getting to everyone. “…the total number of people who experience some form of homelessness over the course of a year is estimated to be 2.5 to 3.5 million individuals, homelessness is a serious problem" (Balasuriya & Buelt, 2020). There simply is not enough resources and funds to be able to reach every single individual or family facing homelessness, although some individuals simply do not want help and would rather continue being chronically homeless. However, most of the homeless population is made up of individuals or families that had no choice due to circumstances as such fire or flood. ”Eviction, fire, job loss, work-related injury, or debilitating illness are among the events that mark the tipping point between being domiciled and being without a roof overhead, especially when resources have

3 been exhausted or are hard to come by in the local community”, (Lee, Shinn, & Culhane, 2021). There are many strategies put in place to fight against homelessness such as emergency shelters, transitional housing programs such as Housing First and Permanent Supportive Housing and shelters. While these have been seen to be effective, there isn’t always room in these resources to accommodate the higher number of homeless individuals. “On a macro level, cities across the United States are addressing homelessness through a variety of housing and service programs, including transitional housing, Housing First, Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH), rapid re- housing, and shelters,” (Nourazari, Lovato, & Weng, 2021). Program Proposal Vision Statement: Ending Homelessness Everywhere Mission Statement: Fighting Homelessness One Person and Family at a Time. Goals: 1. Reduce the number of homeless individuals and families living without any type of shelter. 2. Reaching more individuals and families fearing homelessness before they are homeless. Objectives: 1. A. Assess current numbers of individuals and families in emergency and transitional housing. B. Assist individuals and families currently in emergency or transitional housing get into permanent housing before moving onto other needs. During this stage, allowing for diversity and inclusivity so all individuals fully understand what steps is are that are being taken.

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4 2. A. Increase services of homelessness prevention programs such as rental assistance, vocational resources. B. Conduct events for donations to increase resources offered to the homeless community and offer further information on the social issue. Methods and Activities: 1. A. Construct a Gantt chart. “It is helpful in constructing Gantt charts to identify needed activities, determine which ones must precede or follow others, and then, once a sequence is established, assign time frames,” (Netting, Kettner, McMurtry, & Thomas, 2016). B. Organize individuals or families into cases, record what services are required, services being used, services that have yet to be used or contacted. 2. A. Apply for grants and funding to create more prevention program opportunities. B. Host fundraising events to increase resources and recruit volunteers. Implementation Plan Creating or attending continuing education on causes, interventions, and strategy implementation. Case management has been commonly used when helping individuals transition out of homelessness. A social worker is assigned to an individual that is experiencing homelessness and is the link between the individual and the various resources they could be eligible including mental health counseling, housing or rental assistance, health care services, and employment searches. “Case management (CM) is one such intervention where individual case managers respond to the complexity of navigating the healthcare system by assessing, planning, and facilitating access to health and social services" (Ponka, et al., 2020). It has been

5 seen that stopping homelessness before it can happen is far more effective than any resources that help after the fact, as it is harder to place an individual or a family that has an eviction on their record. Other strategies include critical time intervention for individuals who have been released from a psychiatric facility and screenings of homelessness potential risk factors. “Once they have left homelessness for permanent housing, many formerly homeless families and individuals can benefit from support services to help maintain housing stability. This includes job training, childcare, and community-based counseling services. More fundamentally, enhancing housing stability for poor and low-income renters involves broader policy changes, including living-wage jobs; access to affordable health care; and adequate public benefits for people with disabilities." (Coalition for the Homeless, 2023). Evaluating the Program Evaluating a social service program is how a worker determines if their program is helping the cause or contributing to the cause. Since the overall goal of a social worker is to help, as workers we would want to make sure our programs are helping individuals. Asking for client feedback when accessible is a strategy in which workers see from different perspectives how the program worked and didn’t work for them. It also provides the clients with a chance to suggest what could be improved upon or what they had hoped they would receive help with or instead of. “Documenting participation from individuals in target populations is a critical component in determining if services are properly and effectively delivered and received,” (Tulane University, 2021). Creating a client survey that included demographic information such as age, gender, relationship status, employment status; 1 to 10 scale questions, closed ended questions (yes or no), and open-ended questions where clients could then let workers know what was the most

6 helpful for them, what was the least helpful, what can be improved upon, and what needs no change. Questionnaires can also provide authentic answers and truthful opinions from the clients. Being mindful of how each question is worded so everyone can understand the question in the same way is important when creating an effective questionnaire. According to an article published by Pew Research Center, conducting a focus group beforehand writing a questionnaire helps creators see what kind of questions are the most beneficial to the issue; “Surveyors may conduct pilot tests or focus groups on the early stages of questionnaire development in order to better understand how people think about an issue or comprehend a question. Pretesting a survey is an essential step in the questionnaire design process to evaluate how people respond to the overall questionnaire and specific questions, especially when questions are being introduced for the first time,” (Pew Research Center, 2023). Data collection is used when looking at if a program is effective or not but also by how much it is on either side. Questionnaires or surveys are one qualitative method, but another method would be quantitative, looking at numbers. “Quantitative data measure the depth and breadth of an implementation (e.g., the number of people who participated, the number of people who completed the program). Quantitative data collected before and after an intervention can show its outcomes and impact,” (Agency for Toxic Substances and Diseases Registry, 2015). Looking at the numbers before conducting implementation of objectives and goals will help show if the program is proving to be effective or ineffective and in what aspects. Technology Technology is rapidly growing every day and is used almost everywhere to gain access to the internet, and more specifically demographic information, medical history, education, and

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7 any other type of background information on a person. This can be seen as both helpful and harmful. Helpful in the way a worker can just simply pull up information on a client and see their history in all aspects, but harmful in the way the need of homeless people that need help becomes overwhelming. “Perhaps of greatest potential value to macro practitioners is their ability to download data on census tracts or access geographic information systems to plot the distribution of income, crime, age, health status, and many other variables on high-resolution maps of targeted areas,” (Netting, Kettner, McMurtry, & Thomas, 2016, p. 55). Technology isn’t always as reliable as talking to a person or finding paper records as information could not have been digitized so all the information isn’t on a computer or smart phone. Technology can be used to case track a client, as social workers need to document every encounter and to the best of their ability write in-depth notes about that encounter as they may need to revisit those notes later. Access to email, patient files and correspondence, communication amongst other works, budgeting tools, forms for resources, and policies all are essential for ensuring information is being relayed correctly and accurately. “At the organizational level, even small agencies will need both software and hardware (such as a network server) to establish and maintain systems that allow entry and retrieval of client, management, and fiscal data; Internet access; and email and text-messaging capabilities,” (Netting, Kettner, McMurtry, & Thomas, 2016, p. 258). Technology implementation also allows for any data taken with evaluations and data collection throughout the program to be gathered and stored. There are programs that can graph and conduct further analysis of the information input, and lastly can be accessed at any time it may be needed.

8 Integrated Theory Maslow's Law of Hierarchy is significantly observed by an individual needing to meet their basic needs of shelter, food, water, and employment. “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a motivational theory in psychology comprising a five-tier model of human needs, often depicted as hierarchical levels within a pyramid" (Mccleod, 2023). “Housing First” is observed to place individuals or families into housing even before attempting to pay attention to the other basic needs that those people need met in satisfy the bottom level of the pyramid. “Housing First recognizes that stable housing is a prerequisite for effective psychiatric and substance abuse treatment and for improving quality of life. Once stably housed, individuals are better able to take advantage of wrap-around services – to help support housing stability, employment, and recovery. Without stable housing, attaining these goals becomes much more difficult,” (National Low Income Housing Coalition, 2023). In addition to the stages of the change model, it implies that an individual needs to be ready in their own time to move out of homelessness. Otherwise, they find themselves back at square one, having to start all over again. An individual can think about moving out of homelessness until they are ready to prepare and participate in the actions needed to move out of homelessness. “The Transtheoretical Model (TTM) focuses on the individual's decision-making and is a model of intentional change. The TTM operates on the assumption that people do not change behaviors quickly and decisively" (LaMorte, 2022). While looking at the model, it is to be noted that this process is not a linear process and can be different for every individual going through the stages of this model. The overall goal of this model is that an individual can maintain change and continue to be successful.

9 Developing a Social Service Program When looking at the causes of homelessness, one can see what the main reasons are behind how an individual finds themselves or their families in a state of homelessness. “Communicating the benefits of resources available to the community being served requires carefully considering that community’s needs,” (Tulane University, 2021). More often families find themselves homeless due to circumstances that they had no control over such as fire, floor, or job loss. The first thing they are going to need is a place to lay their heads at night before having to face the long list of basic needs they need to accomplish as well. Being able to have basic needs such as shelter, food, water, clothing, and safety are the basis of Maslow’s Need theory. When looking at the other programs in place, it is observed that individuals are helped with finding a place to stay that is permanent before being able to fill the other needs. Although in some cases, employment is needed first over shelter. There are many different types of homelessness, 4 types of homelessness: transitional, episodic, chronic, and hidden, (Red Nose Day, 2021). In terms of theories that have been applied to this proposal, stages of change come into effect for individuals and families were continuously finding themselves homeless no matter the circumstances behind the reason. These are otherwise known as chronic homeless; they prefer to be homeless and do not accept any help that is offered to them. These are the individuals that need to be ready to make a change in their lives for them to be successful and remain off the streets. If they are heavily pushed and overall, not ready to make the change, the chances of them relapsing back into homelessness are significantly high. In these instances, programs warrant no benefits and all that can be done is the continued education behind the resources that can be available to them.

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10 With that taken into consideration, creating a program that helps reduce, if not end homelessness renders almost impossible. This is due to the small number of individuals who want to remain in a state of homelessness. Even in a perfect world where funds were endless and resources were never-ending, homelessness would still be seen worldwide due to the people that do not want to accept any help of any kind. When looking at homelessness, you see individuals and families who have been homeless for years and years simply because they didn’t know what resources they could access, they eventually become accustomed to the way of living and when the time comes, they are offered help, they no longer want it. Leadership Homelessness is a huge problem in the world but more specifically in the United States. The larger the states or cities, the bigger the homelessness issue. “Public policies can also exert an important influence on homelessness at the macro level. This happens most directly through the generosity or stinginess of social welfare programs that provide cash assistance, tax credits, housing and food subsidies, and other forms of aid to poor households”, (Lee, B. A., Shinn, M., & Culhane, D. P. (2021, April 2). Strategies that have been the most effective are the homelessness prevention programs such as rental assistance before an eviction can take place and case management after the fact as one individual is assigned to create access to resources that are available to individuals attempting to break free of homelessness. Those include mental health services, health care services, housing, rental assistance that helps pay deposits or late rent, and employment search so an individual can remain in permanent housing and not relapse into homelessness. It has been shown that if an individual can stop homelessness from happening to begin with, it is a lot more cost-effective, and it is also likely that they can remain in their housing.

11 Reaching more individuals and families who are homeless with weekly volunteers going out in the community with items that are frequently needed such as hygiene products and nonperishable food items, while simultaneously giving out information that could help them out of homelessness. This would help spread the information out within the communities in various locations. Advertising in a way that allows individuals and families to reach out to resources that can help them before they are evicted from their homes or before their utilities get shut off. To lead this type of social service, a leader would need to be receptive to the clients they are serving and the employees and volunteers that are helping the cause. There needs to be structure among the ranks, however more innovative thinking, and solutions to further the cause can be just as important. “The human relations model is characterized by efforts on the part of management to make each worker feel useful and important. Management is open to feedback, and subordinates are allowed to exercise some self-direction on routine matters,” (Netting, Kettner, McMurtry, & Thomas, 2016, p. 250). Job descriptions need to be clear and concise; objectives and goals are broken down into smaller and more obtainable tasks to prevent employees and volunteers from becoming overwhelmed, and all data being collected needs to be accurately monitored and recorded to ensure authenticity. “Programs should also be designed, monitored, and evaluated using the best available information about “what works,” (Netting, Kettner, McMurtry, & Thomas, 2016, p. 253).

12 References Agency for Toxic Substances and Diseases Registry. (2015). Chapter 7: Program Evaluation: Evaluation Methods . Retrieved from Agency for Toxic Substances and Diseases Registry: https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/communityengagement/pce_program_methods.html Balasuriya, L., & Buelt, E. (2020, May 29). The Never-Ending Loop: Homelessness, Psychiatric Disorder, and Mortality . Retrieved from Psychiatric Times: https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/never-ending-loop-homelessness-psychiatric- disorder-and-mortality Lee, B. A., Shinn, M., & Culhane, D. P. (2021, April 2). Homelessness as a Moving Target. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 693 (1), 8-26. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/000271622199703 Mccleod, S. (2023, October 24). Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs . Retrieved from Simply Psychology: https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html National Low Income Housing Coalition. (2023, February 13). The Case of Housing First. Retrieved from National Low Income Housing Coalition: https://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/Housing-First-Research.pdf Netting, F. E., Kettner, P. M., McMurtry, S. L., & Thomas, M. L. (2016). Social Work: Macro Practice (6 ed.). (P. Education, Ed.) US. Nourazari, S., Lovato, K., & Weng, S. (2021). Making the Case for Proactive Strategies to Alleviate Homelessness: A Systems Approach. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18 (2), 526. doi:https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18020526

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13 Pew Research Center. (2023). Writing Survey Questions . Retrieved from Pew Research Center: https://www.pewresearch.org/our-methods/u-s-surveys/writing-survey-questions/ Red Nose Day. (2021, December 6). What Are Four Types of Homelessness . Retrieved from Red Nose Day: https://rednoseday.org/news/what-are-four-types-homelessness Tulane University. (2021, May 16). What Is Social Work Program Design and Evaluation? Retrieved from Tulane University: School of Social Work: https://socialwork.tulane.edu/blog/what-is-social-work-program-design-and-evaluation/

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