From the beginning, LINC’s effort to connect nearly 2,000 households to more than $2.8 million in U.S. rental and utility bill assistance funds was essentially a street mission.

It’s as severe as the education community feared. The effects of the pandemic on lost learning place a community-wide burden on everyone — including LINC’s Caring Communities — to help children recover.

A third round of free home Covid-19 tests are now available online at covidtests.gov. Look for updated Covid-19 vaccination and testing opportunities in the Kansas City area at kclinc.org/covid19

It started slowly, but once federal pandemic aid for rent and utilities began reaching Americans in need, more than 80% went as designed to low-income households. LINC played a key role in the Kansas City area.

When problems boil up between renters and landlords, hotline services can be overwhelmed and legal aid offices busy. Now renters under stress can go online to the Tenant Problem Solver for help.

Every home in the U.S. is eligible to order four home COVID-⁠19 tests. The tests are completely free. Orders will usually ship in 7-12 days. The CDC urges households to order your tests now so they will be available when you need them.

Help is standing by for Missourians seeking help in finding a job, or a better job.

The Missouri Workforce Initiative Team is waiting your call at 573-415-8337.

The pain is all around us, persistent and often hard to see. But a youth mental health crisis demands “a swift and coordinated response” to a pandemic that has “exacerbated the unprecedented stresses young people already faced,” says the U.S. Surgeon General.

For a day, Kansas City law officers traded police cruisers for shopping carts. Their partners were children, sent from LINC and Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church, eager to push the limits of $100 gift cards — and make friends.

LINC, Morning Star and the Kansas City Fire Department accepted awards for the fast-acting teamwork that helped deliver thousands of Covid-19 vaccinations for communities hardest-hit by the pandemic, including hundreds of Mattie Rhodes households.

With holidays coming and the promise of family gatherings and parties, Covid-19 vaccinations are now approved to help protect children ages 5 to 11 and their families from getting and spreading the virus. Here’s where to get them.

With grace and hard-won joy, the annual Lights On Afterschool events returned with their resilient communities in celebration of the power of community schools .

Look out, because one of the purposeful effects of ArtsTech’s Youth Health Ambassador’s training in Kansas City is the fire it’s lighting in its graduates like Ruskin High School students Jayleona Mayfield and Shymerra Butler.

Families with children who qualified for free or reduced-price school meals in the last school year can also receive a one-time $375 benefit per child through the summer Pandemic-EBT card program. The deadline for making application is Oct. 10.

A food service crisis up and down the supply chain has districts scrambling after new resources and paring down menu options to meet the critical task of feeding students. “School is the only place where some of our kids get a hot meal.”

In a quick trip home from Washington, D.C.’s wars Saturday, U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II stepped into the nest of Kansas City’s most vexing struggle. “Lack of adequate housing,” Cleaver said, “is the No. 1 issue right now in the United States. No question about it. This is it.”

The city wants everyone’s help in spreading the word to get more households to apply. “We need to get the message out that you are not alone,” 3rd District City Councilwoman Melissa Robinson said. “A lot of people are in this situation for the very first time.”

By now, most of you with children are already receiving the automatic $250 or $300 in extra monthly deposits in Child Tax Credits to help with the straining costs of raising families. But some households with children may be missing out and need help applying for the government relief. There’s an easy tool for that.

Missouri families who are receiving food stamps can expect an additional benefit of $375 for each child under age 6. The extra funds will be added automatically to each household’s existing Electronic Benefit Transfer card (EBT) for food stamps — or SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

The increase — approved by the federal government earlier in August — is the largest single boost in the program’s history. Learn more and see how you can apply.

A massive federal relief effort is trying to catch up with the vast need of renters and landlords who are struggling with rents, utilities and mortgages because of the pandemic. More funds are coming and renters with past-due bills should apply, say the United Way of Greater Kansas City and local landlords.

As parents, guardians and students excitedly and anxiously cross off the days until the first day of school, the Kansas City Health Department is helping families make it a smooth start. Appointments required, so call today.

We’ve learned a lot in the past year and a half. And everything we know about hardship, strength, resilience and unity has primed us for what looms as the most critical school year probably in a lifetime. Everyone has a role. Here’s ours.

The pursuit of the unvaccinated is dogged now — “drilled-down” — as Truman Medical Centers has returned with its mobile clinic to Morning Star’s community center at 27th and Prospect Avenue for moments just like this . . .

We’ve learned a lot in the past year and a half. And everything we know about hardship, strength, resilience and unity has primed us for what looms as the most critical school year probably in a lifetime. But it’s going to take all of us, and here’s why.

Just get all the teachers to put together a list. Then GEHA representatives Karen Rutherford and Niki Nelson said they’d take it from there. See what it means to Cler-Mont Elementary School in the Fort Osage School District.

It was a roll call of pain, fear — even death. Kansas City area medical directors shared their grim accounting with the city in a public call for help Friday, beseeching a community “teetering on a precipice” to get vaccinated and to mask-up against Covid-19’s Delta variant. The Morning Star vaccination clinic is stepping up.

The fight against the Covid-19 Delta variant is on in Kansas City, and LINC’s vaccination clinic with Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church and Heart to Heart International is opening for walk-ins on selected Tuesday mornings beginning July 27 at 10 a.m.

For most low-wage workers, decent rental housing is unaffordable — nationwide and in Missouri. In no state, metropolitan area, or county in the U.S. can a worker earning the prevailing minimum wage afford a modest two-bedroom rental home in a standard 40-hour work week.

It doesn't matter how well — or not — you and your child managed Covid’s hard time. A common message is brewing. Children, however much they struggled with online learning, will be advanced with their peers into the next grade. Everyone will recover together. Schools’ plea: Just come back.