Network aims to help homeless navigate services

The Center for Hope offers low-cost clothing, baby baskets for new moms and religious counseling to some of Sioux Falls' most vulnerable residents.

But it can’t do everything.

The reality for people who are homeless in Sioux Falls is that help is available, but it's scattered across the city, provided a la carte by multiple organizations, each with its own specialty. Several of those groups are now teaming up in hopes of making the system easier to navigate.

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“We want to be welcoming at the top, but if somebody really wants to improve their life, we want to come alongside them as best we can,” Executive Director Brett Rockvam said.

The Center for Hope is one of six organizations launching a pilot program to track each person who depends on their services. The early phase of the Sioux Empire Network of Care is scheduled to begin in June, bringing together local providers of food, clothes, shelter and financial assistance.

Jeff Irving, 40, needed help to get back on his feet after a felony conviction killed his hope for finding a paying job and independence. He liked the idea of providers combining their efforts.

“There’s a lot of opportunities, but you’ve got to know how to use it,” Irving said. “It’s a good plan.”

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The new database is designed to improve care, but homeless advocates say there’s another benefit for the community.

Funded by $200,000 grant from the Bush Foundation, the Network of Care could eventually help reveal the full scope of Sioux Falls’ homelessness problem.

“All I know right now is how many people who have utilized a service, but I don’t have any idea if that person is duplicated,” said Stacey Tieszen, coordinator for Minnehaha County’s Homeless Advisory Board.

There’s no perfect way of determining how many men, women and children in the city are without a home or within days of losing the roof over their head.

Numbers vary, depending on their source.

There’s the state’s yearly homeless count, but it’s a snapshot headcount occurring in the span of a single day. In January, the count identified 434 people in Minnehaha County who were homeless.

Meanwhile, Sioux Falls public schools have already identified more than 800 children who were homeless at some point this school year.

Some other numbers from 2015:

• County human services served 1,425 households that identified as homeless.
• Bishop Dudley offered shelter to 1,537 unduplicated guests.
• St. Francis House served 241 unduplicated guests.
• Children’s Inn served 759 children and 544 women.
• Berakhah House served 77 homeless veterans.

None of these groups coordinate services enough to know if they are serving the same people, Tieszen said.

There’s also no easy way to determine what services people rely on each day to survive, said Janet Kittams-Lalley, president of the Helpline Center. Helpline will coordinate the network care and work with other participants as they share services. They include the Center for Hope, Bishop Dudley, St. Francis, Community Outreach and Feeding South Dakota.

“We don’t really know the entire journey of a person in need as they go through the system,” Kittams-Lalley said.

Organizers want to ensure people who rely on services don’t sacrifice their privacy, said Dane Bloch, executive director of Community Outreach.

His group already requires people to consent to the release of information. It doesn’t mean their personal business is out there for the world to see. Instead, it’s about tracking and reporting data to groups such as the Sioux Empire United Way for funding, Bloch said.

The Network of Care database would allow groups to share data internally as long as they agree to keep information private.

“First and foremost in our minds: How do we ensure somebody’s personal information stays and remains private?” Bloch said.

The new database should cut down on duplication of services, but the real goal is to prevent people from getting lost as they move between services, Rockvam said.

So even though the Center for Hope isn’t a shelter, staff will be able to log onto a database and see if there are open beds a few blocks away at the Bishop Dudley Hospitality House.

“Really it’s about what’s falling through the cracks,” Rockvam said.