Service to Atlanta Homeless Children Since 1986

Early Child Care
Our Early Childcare Program is for the children of homeless families aged one month to five years old. This program was accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children in March of 2000. Less than 7% of all early child care programs in the United States have received this accreditation. Our developmentally-appropriate program focuses on the four developmental domains, good nutrition and preparing the children for school. For many of our children, it is the first stable and loving place they can go each day.

Counseling
The Shelter provides counseling to homeless parents on issues that include but is not limited to loss of employment, housing, relationships with a child or a significant other, setting goals, substance abuse, and self-esteem. Counseling sessions also center on health maintenance, legal issues and budget implementation.

Parent Support Group
The Parent Support Group helps parents deal with the overwhelming anxiety and frustration caused by homelessness, and focuses on developing coping skills related to good parenting techniques, such as effective parent-child communication, or what to expect from the ages and stages of child development. The support group strengthens the entire family and increases positive functioning.

Children's Nurturing Group
All children, especially the homeless, need to express feelings that result from an often confusing and stressful environment. The Nurturing Group allows Atlanta homeless children to explore and discuss their feelings. Puppets, paper dolls, songs, stories, role play, and other fun activities generate group interaction and appropriate responses. Nurturing Group activities help:

• Increase awareness of feelings in self and others
  
• Increase children's awareness of self and self within family
  
• Reinforce appropriate child/adult interactions
  
• Increase children's knowledge of the concepts of praise and criticism
  
• Identify feelings associated with praise and criticism
  
• Increase children's ability to give and receive praise
  
• Increase the awareness of children to exercise personal power to manage their own lives.

Medical Services
Medical staff from CAPN visit the Shelter weekly to provide well-child checks, immunizations, and referrals.

Information and Referral Services
At times, ACS social service staff find that a client's needs are best addressed by another agency. In this case, staff members provide information and referral to the most appropriate organization. The staff has developed extensive resource files and established networks and agency contacts that are helpful to ACS families.

Job Track
Job skills development is an essential component of the Shelter's overall plan to help homeless families become and remain self-sufficient. Job Track provides a centralized location where parents can achieve job readiness by gaining the essential pre-training components of skill assessment, job counseling and education. The program gives homeless parents access to employment counselors, job search materials, resume help, and a voice mail box to follow up on job leads. Job Track also provides clothing for interviews, transportation to and from interviews, and meals while the parents are seeking jobs.

Furniture Bank
The Metro Atlanta Furniture Bank, a separate organization, distributes furniture to families who have previously been homeless. The Atlanta Children's Shelter relies on funds donated specifically to help families to pay the modest Furniture Bank fees for its clients.

Home Starter Kit
Each family that secures housing receives a "Home Starter Kit" containing linens, lamps, iron, dishes, eating utensils, toaster, and cleaning supplies. The Shelter also accepts donations of household goods from individuals and groups in the community.

Education and Training
After a family establishes stable living arrangements, the social service staff helps parents clarify and focus their educational plans. Community support programs, especially those offering free or low-cost child care, are essential for these parents. ACS provides information and resource lists, and parents are referred to community organizations for services.

The Sunshine Fund
The Sunshine Fund, a discretionary cash account for necessary client-related expenses, provides help for homeless families facing critical financial needs. Funded by private donations, the fund covers rent and utility deposits, MARTA cards/tokens, shoes and emergency clothing needs for children, work-related clothing for parents (such as uniforms), medicines, and emergency food.

Transitional Child Care
To ensure post-homeless stability for families who have found work and housing, the Shelter offers a Transitional Child Care Program. Designed to provide free child care and social support during a family's transition from homelessness to self-sufficiency, the service is available to families for up to five months following eligibility determination.

Interagency Collaboration Activities
Homeless families with children have a number of needs that our program alone cannot meet. To ensure that these diverse needs are met, the Shelter embraces a strategy that promotes family strength and integrity. Through collaboration and partnerships with other service providers, we are able to respond to the depth of the problems our clients have. It is common practice for the executive director, social worker, and other professional staff to communicate frequently with other groups serving homeless families and to coordinate services with other "mainstream" programs not specifically targeted to homeless families. The intent is to avoid the pitfall of further segregating and stigmatizing families through separate systems for the homeless or formerly homeless.

Our collaboration activities and partnerships have helped improve the effectiveness and efficiency of services to our families in the following areas:

• Integrated client support (such as transportation, employment, or health care)
  
• Case consultation or conferencing
  
• Information exchange
  
• Joint proposal development
  
• Staff training
  
• Student internship/practicum
  
• Alliances for advocacy and legislation
  
• Shared resources
  
• Volunteers