Spring Cleaning Can Support Families!

Moving into a new home is a prideful accomplishment for the families who come to First Place!

We have some great news today – a high number of our families have been moving into transitional housing from shelters or shared housing. This is definitely a reason to celebrate!

Along with these great successes, First Place currently has a great need for household items to help these families turn an empty apartment into their home. We are looking for new and gently used household items.

If you’ve been spring cleaning, some of these items may be in your donate pile:

• Kitchen items such as: plates, bowls, silverware, mugs, pots & pans, baking pans, colanders, cutting boards, serving utensils—and anything you find is essential in the kitchen!
• Dish towels, bath towels, washcloths and laundry detergent
• Pillows, comforters, blankets and sheet sets
• Lamps with lightbulbs
• Plastic Hangers

We currently are not able to accept furniture donations to pass on to families. We would like to encourage donation of gift certificates to places parents can purchase furniture and other household items. Gift certificates starting at $50 for these stores are greatly appreciated: Goodwill, Ikea, Value village, Target, JC Penney, and Fred Meyer.

More helpful ideas:

• Purchase some of these items on Amazon.com and have them shipped directly to First Place. When you use the Amazon School Rewards link here, a percentage of your order is donated back to First Place.
• Forward this blog to your friends and neighbors, or post it in your office break room.
• Donate the proceeds of your spring garage sale to First Place.
• Link to this blog from your Facebook page. Challenge your friends to get involved.
• Ask your work department to each pick something off this list to donate.

For more information or to set up a time to deliver a donation contact Lisa Foss at (206) 323 6715.

Vote Yes On Prop. 1!

by Dr. Doreen Cato, Executive Director

On November 3rd, if Seattle voters do not vote to approve Housing Levy, Proposition 1, First Place will lose important funding to two of our most essential programs; the Rental Assistance Program and the Housing Program.


Please vote yes to renew this important proposition when you vote between now and November 3rd. You will find Proposition 1 on the back of your ballot in the upper right hand corner. Vote YES to approve the Levy, which for the past 28 years has been assisting some of Washington’s most vulnerable citizens from losing their housing in difficult times. Last year, for example the First Place Rental Assistance Program directly served one hundred and forty five individuals helping these people with immediate funding to help them retain or obtain housing.

Also, by providing networking and contact information to other community resources, the First Place Rental Assistance Program served approximately 3,362 individuals last year.

First Place is one among many local organizations providing Rental Assistance funding to families in order to prevent them from becoming homeless. This funding helps by:

• preventing families from losing their homes and becoming homeless;
• preventing homelessness while a family deals with job loss, medical bills or a death in the family;
• moving families into market-rate housing through providing deposits for apartments;
• providing support services to stabilize families for the long-term; and
• leveraging Non-Profit developers, enabling them to build affordable housing for families.

Rental Assistance is just one of the 5 successful programs funded through the Housing Levy, yet affects over 3,000 families.

Where will these families go when they lose their homes? Our state’s unemployment rate just went up to 9.3% -- now more than ever families need help to keep their homes and children need a safe and warm place to come home to.

First Place endorses passing Proposition 1.

*This letter is part of bi-yearly newsletter.

Two Ways To Support First Place At The Grocery Store

We're really excited about two ways you can help support First Place right now -- by shopping at Safeway and by collecting Box Tops For Education.

Right now, if you shop at Safeway, check your receipts for the section titled "10% Back-To-Schools". It looks exactly like this:

First Place will receive 10% of your total if you follow the instructions listed on your receipt! Safeway will stop printing this offer on October 9 and then you will have until October 13 to go online and enter the code. All you have to do is go to the website www.backtoschools.escrip.com and click "Enter Receipts". Then you choose First Place as your school, or enter ID 5000012903. Then continue following instructions.

The great news is, you only have to do it once, and it tracks your purchases!

Now Collecting: Box Tops For Education!

Box Tops for Education tabs can be found on hundreds of items you buy at the grocery store like Cherrios, Hefty, Kleenex, Huggies, Cottonelle, and more. (See a full list of items here.)

Collecting Box Tops and sending them to First Place has the potential to raise thousands of dollars towards school supplies and learning materials for our teachers and students.

We want as many people as possible to get in the habit of collecting Box Tops For Education and mailing them in to First Place.

Here are some ideas on how you can help us:

• Ask your workplace, neighbors or book club to collect box tops.
• Put a message out on Facebook and/or Twitter with a link to this blog posting.
• If you already collect Box Tops for another school, consider splitting your collection and sending half to First Place.
  
• You can even sign up for special deal and news alerts from the Box Tops For Education website.
  

Once you start collecting, all you need to do is mail the Box Tops to:
First Place
Attn: Development Office
PO Box 22536
Seattle, WA 98122

We will be mailing a package out about every other month.

What is the newest issue emerging in homelessness policy?

Recently the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius had a Q & A session with the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

Below is her answer from the first of five questions where she specifically talks about homeless families with children. It's exciting to see that families with children are at the top of the list of emerging issues.

What is the newest issue emerging in homelessness policy?
The issue of homelessness among children has become particularly visible as the recent collapse of the housing industry coupled with the current recession has swelled the number of families with children seeking homelessness assistance. I believe that it is possible to increase our efforts to help the growing population of homeless children and families, while also maintaining our efforts to address chronic homelessness. There are sizable opportunities for real collaboration using funding that has been made available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, as well as with the recent passage of the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act. In addition, the President’s budget for fiscal year 2010 includes over $400 million in HHS programs targeted to individuals, youth, and families experiencing homelessness, and a total of $338 billion for fourteen non-targeted, or mainstream, HHS programs that can serve persons experiencing homelessness. It will be critical to coordinate these resources flowing into communities to ensure that we are reaching the broadest populations possible, including in our efforts to prevent homelessness. HHS programs provide critical supportive services to homeless individuals, families, and children, and these services help these populations achieve or maintain economic and housing stability. By partnering HHS resources with resources available through other Federal agencies we can ensure a broader reach.

Read the full article here.

Family homelessness up 9% nationally, 56% in suburban areas

Yesterday the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) present its 2008 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress. The report showed that family homelessness is up 9% in shelters with the largest increases being in rural and suburban cities with an increase of 56%.

The good news is that the HUD will be begin to analyze homelessness quarterly (instead of yearly) in order to gain a faster understanding of the economic impact on homelessness. Quarterly reports will be put out by the Homelessness Pulse Project. The project will report on data using a sample of cities and communities.

Here is a snapshot of findings in the first quarter of 2009 (January through March):

• Of total homeless persons in the study, 55% of the individuals were in household with dependent children.
• Of sheltered homeless persons, 61% were in households with dependent children.
• Of unsheltered homeless persons, 6% were in households with dependent children.
  

Yesterday the HUD also announced Recovery Act funding awards of $1.2 billion throughout the US for rapid re-housing and homelessness prevention. Of the $1.2 billion, Seattle was awarded $4,993,052. Here is a paragraph from the press release to explain what funds will be used for:

Grants provided under HPRP (Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program) are not intended to provide long-term support for individuals and families, nor will they afford mortgage assistance to homeowners facing foreclosure. Rather, HPRP offers a variety of short- and medium-term financial assistance to those who would otherwise become homeless, many due to sudden economic crisis. This can include short-term rental assistance (up to three months), medium-term rental assistance (up to 18 months), security deposits, utility deposits, utility payments, moving cost assistance, and hotel vouchers. Payments will not be made directly to households, but only to third parties, such as landlords or utility companies.

Learn more about how First Place helps families through rental assistance, housing and services.

Additional Links:
CNNMoney: Homeless families spike in the suburbs
CBS News: More Families Joins Ranks of Homeless
News Release: HUD Issues 2008 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress

In the News: Recent Articles of Interest

There have been a quite a few articles lately that we want to share.

From USA Today: School caters to homeless children.
Mustard Seed School in Sacramento caters to children ages 3 to 15 - providing educational services for about a month before a child transfers into public school. First Place started as a similar stop-gap program but over 20 years has grown to enrolling an entire family for up to three years. We are always happy to see similar programs!

From the Washington Post: Poor? Pay up.
This article explains the high costs of poverty and why you have to be rich to be poor. If you keep up with us on Twitter we posted this link a few days ago.

From Seattle Weekly blog: Affordable Housing Going Up in Central District--If It Can Get Its Parking Approved.
Anytime housing for families with children, homeless and low-income households is available it's a great thing. In his post Seattle Weekly blogger Damon Agnos questions why parking is needed at a housing facility for homeless and low-income families. First Place invites anyone with this question to come down for a tour to see why a homeless family would have a car but no home. We host tours every Friday at 11am. Sign up online.

Besides that, 51 units of housing for families is excellent news!

Gates Foundation Pledges $60 Million to Help End Family Homelessness

The Washington Families Fund is launching a new strategy to prevent and end family homelessness.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have pledged $60 Million over 10 years to the public-private partnership.

The major goal of this initiative will be to reduce the number of homeless families by 50% in the next decade.

Read more here in the Seattle Times.
Read the Gates Foundation Press Release.

First Place is excited to see this partnership in light of the increase in homelessness prevention requests through our rental assistance funds. This month in our first hour of taking rental assistance phone calls - we received 60 calls for support. We normally receive about 35 calls a month, and not all in the first hour. First Place can typically only offer assistance to 4 or 5 families a month.

Two new reports on homeless children and families

In our last post, Are there more homeless students in our schools?, we talked about homeless families being invisible to the rest of the population because they stay for long periods of time in non-traditional housing, or they share housing with another family.

Yesterday another article was featured in the NY Times, giving a closer look at how families with children are coping with unstable homes and living in motels month to month. Read that article here: As Jobs Vanish, Motel Rooms Become Home.

"Motels are a part of the transition process for over 15% of First Place families, some of which live there for a majority of a school-year. In that kind of environment most of these families become exposed to street violence, drug use and other ills that develop the social and emotional traumas that prevents academic excellence or family stability," said Gene Harris, Director of Family Support Services at First Place.

Yesterday we also learned that nationally 1 in 50 children experience homelessness in America each year. The report by the National Center on Family Homelessness also ranks all 50 states. And where did Washington fall? At number 25 - right in the middle. Here is an overview on the Washington State report card:

• 9,575 children in grades Kindergarten through 8 are homeless.
• 1 in 26 children do not know where they will get their next meal.
• Less than 25% of homeless children will graduate from High School.
• 56.5% of homeless families with children struggle with transportation to and from school.

The report also says there is no dedicated state funding (in Washington) for homeless education.

Download full report here: http://www.homelesschildrenamerica.org/

Check out just Washington State here: http://www.firstplaceschool.org/WA_report.pdf

Are there more homeless students in our schools?

Today we wanted to share this article with you from MSNBC.com: ‘Tidal wave’ of homeless students hits schools.

More and more we have been seeing articles like this one reporting on the rising numbers of family homelessness and homeless children attending public schools.

This article is a great snapshot of what families in Seattle and King County are dealing with right now. First Place is a unique agency which serves the needs of the entire family in their struggle with homelessness and extreme poverty. We decided to take a few of the themes in the article and tell you a little bit more about what that means and how First Place helps children and families with their struggle.

Read the article here.
Learn more about First Place on our website, or by reading our blog profile.

Housing – Family homelessness can be invisible
The MSNBC.com article mentions one family living out of a garage, and another which is living with friends. Family homelessness is often invisible to the larger community because many of the families are living in non-traditional places (such as garages) which are not included in a One Night Count. (Learn about the Local and National One Night Counts)

First Place works with parents to move them from emergency shelters and temporary homes (such as a garage, a car, or friends house) and into stable housing. All families enrolled in our services work with a case manager who supports parents on job training and education, job placement, housing, life skills and health needs. First Place also has a limited number of apartment units to house families with school-age children.

Learn more about the invisible homeless in this Change.org blog post: Full House: More Families Shackin' Up.

Trauma caused by instability
When children have adult worries such where they will be sleeping and if they will eat dinner, they are not able to concentrate at school, or even sleep at night. The extreme stress and trauma also affects their physical health, their ability to learn, their emotional and social behavior, and cognitive development. Many homeless families are a single parent fleeing domestic violence or abuse which also causes trauma in children. At First Place, we work with children on their social and emotional development. We help them feel they are in a safe and trusted environment and provide counseling and art therapy to help work through this difficult time.

How trauma affects education
Many students attending First Place come to our school two to three grade levels behind their peers in public schools due to the trauma and stress of poverty and homelessness. First Place works on stabilizing the emotional needs of the students and their academic needs. In addition to the school day, many students have a volunteer tutor or mentor who spends one hour a week with the student. We also provide 40 hours of tutoring to students through Knowledge Points. At the end of the 40 hours, students gain an average one grade level in reading or math.

Teasing at school is another trauma that children endure as a result of instability in their lives. At First Place, most of the kids are in the same situation – so teasing about having unbrushed hair or wearing the same clothes every day just doesn’t happen.

Health, nutrition & basic needs
Children and families living in extreme poverty and unstable housing often lack proper nutrition, regular meals and sometimes aren’t able to bath regularly. Stress and trauma breaks down the immune system and especially affects children who become susceptible to colds, flu and more.

First Place has a nurse practitioner on-site to take care of the health needs of the children. We also provide breakfast, lunch and an afternoon snack. We also provide school bus transportation to First Place and back to their home in the evening. Throughout the year we provide clothing, shoes and hygiene items. We also work with parents to ensure their living situation supports the daily hygiene and health needs of their family.

Is Seattle seeing a ‘Tidal Wave’ of homeless students?
Answer: It’s hard to tell. First Place called Ruth McFadden, the district homeless liaison for Seattle Public Schools, and learned that most of the calls coming in are from new families and that a lot of families who were previously asking for assistance have been able to move forward. Ruth also mentioned that some of the addresses were new to her – meaning that the families asking for assistance might not be living in shelters and are possibly living in non-traditional homes mentioned at the beginning of the article.

Information about the rights of homeless students in Seattle Public School can be found here: http://www.seattleschools.org/area/homeless/index.dxml

First Place is seeing an increase in phone calls asking for assistance, and like many organizations, is not able to expand our services to meet the need due to the current economy.

Why First Place?
First Place is a tuition free private school especially designed to meet the needs of homeless and low-income students and provide support to the entire family. Our goal is to help children successfully transition into public school and to stabilize the entire family. Students transition into public school within one to three years of their time at First Place.

View a recent Success Story of a student who recently transitioned into a Seattle public school here: Proud Parent Say Thank You.

We invite you to learn more. First Place offers tour on Fridays at 11am. RSVP at tours@firstplaceschool.org.

Success Story: Divided Family Comes Home

Within the walls of First Place, and in the lives of the families we touch, successes happen every day. As often as we can, First Place will share these successes with you. This is what we would like to share today.

In 2007 First Place began our Family Unification Program to assist incarcerated mothers rebuild their lives and regain their children. For mother of two Jalea* this program came just at the right time.

In January 2008 Jalea was rejoining society without any means to gain housing, employment or reuniting with her two children in foster-care. Stable housing and stable employment are two key components of being able to reunite with children who have been displaced during incarceration.

Jalea's first step to getting her children back was calling First Place.

“Jalea had months of work ahead of her to meet her requirements to the court system and the department of social and health services,” said Ms. Charlene Bowen, a case manager at First Place. “She also had personal goals of attending classes to achieve her GED and learning how to prepare a better life for her children.”

After working with First Place staff for over 6 months to attend all her meetings, study for her tests and gain housing in a First Place facility Jalea become a mother again when her 18-month-old son came home.

“Now over a year after beginning with our Family Unification Program Jalea is one week away from attaining her GED and is preparing for her next stage as a student and a mother,” said Ms. Charlene. Her second child, a 4-year-old daughter is coming home to her in the beginning of March.

* for privacy sake client names have been changed.

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Success Story: Proud Parent Says Thank You

Within the walls of First Place, and in the lives of the families we touch, successes happen every day. As often as we can, First Place will share these successes with you. This is what we would like to share today.

First Place recently received the following note from Dara, a mother whose daughter graduated out of our program this past year.

"As a mother of a former student of First Place I am proud to let you know that my daughter became a Rainier Scholar Nominee. Her teacher told me in the parent teacher conference that out of 31 students in her class my daughter is top 2. The teacher also told me that my daughter shows intellectual curiosity and scores above average on all her work in class.

I believe that my daughter got the nurturing and the life skills that she needed to survive in the public school from First Place staff.

I want to thank you all personally on how much of an impact you guys have in all our lives. You gave my daughter something that any other school would never think of doing."

Dara, pictured with her daughter, is currently employed full-time at First Place and continues to provide leadership and guidance to struggling families.

As Dara celebrates with her family First Place is celebrating their hard work in breaking the cycle of poverty and homelessness. Dara and her family were very involved with First Place while receiving services. Her and her husband chaired the Parent Advisory Council, Dara went down to Olympia with First Place every year to lobby for children rights and she truly became a mentor to her peers who were experiencing struggles with homelessness and poverty.

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