Streamlined Resource Connections

Picture this, a young mother sitting in her car in a grocery store parking lot, doing math in her head that never comes out right. Rent has just gone up. Her hours at work have just gone down. And her son needs new shoes for school, again, on a budget that has no room left in it.

This isn't a just a made up scenario but real situations that people right here in our communities face every day. She's one of the of households that the ALICE report calls Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed — working, often more than one job, and still coming up short every single month. She has a job. She has a roof over her head. What she doesn’t have is any margin for the unexpected, and life is mostly made of the unexpected.

What needs to change is more than just financial education, it is connections. An Integrated Service Delivery model where those who are struggling and need resources can reach our for help and be connected to all the resources that can offer assistance. Real change meant to streamline the process of uplifting those in need out of tough situations. Getting people into a budget that actually matches real expenses. Short-term assistance programs to cover the gap while she requalified for a higher-paying shift. A connection to a tax credit she didn't know she qualified for, and so on.

None of this is a single issue, nor does it have one single fix. It takes a handful of the right resources, lined up at the right time, by people who knew where to look.

That's the idea behind the model United Way of Pekin is working on building out across our community. Instead of asking families to find their own way through a maze of separate agencies and applications, we're working to connect the dots for them — so a single conversation can open the door to several forms of support at once.

So that this young mother is back to feeling like she's ahead of her bills instead of chasing them.

Stories like hers are exactly what we hear daily and why this work matters, and why we're committed to reducing the number of ALICE households in our community over the next five years. If you'd like to learn more about how Integrated Service Delivery works, or how to support it, we'd love to talk with you.