Family stability grants bolster casework in Hickman Mills, Grandview school districts

Staff at the Community Assistance Council in Hickman Mills, seen here unloading donations to a food pantry, will soon have the help of case managers working directly with families in need because of new grants from the United Way of Greater Kansas City and the Jackson County Children’s Services Fund.

The social service agencies supporting the Hickman Mills and Grandview school districts are wasting no time.

Almost as soon as the United Way of Greater Kansas City and the Jackson County Children’s Services Fund awarded grants for case managers to Hickman Mills’ Community Assistance Council (CAC) and the Grandview Assistance Program (GAP), new workers are being hired and put into action.

The agencies leapt at the opportunity because experience has proven that dedicated case managers are an essential missing link between overwhelmed families in need and the myriad social services out there that can help them.

“We can’t imagine the stress in their lives,” said CAC Executive Director Rachel Casey, about families worried over shut-off utilities, or eviction, or hunger — let alone getting children to school. “You’re in survival mode.”

The United Way of Greater KC distributed the grant money through the Siemer Institute’s Family Stability Initiative with the goal of seeing school children thrive, said Jim MacDonald, the local United Way’s chief community investment officer.

Two case managers are starting at CAC and another case manager is being hired at GAP to provide struggling families in the school districts with someone who can guide them to the help they need and persist in seeing the help through.

“We can keep kids in their own school,” MacDonald said. “We can stabilize families and have positive impact on student outcomes.”

The county’s children’s services fund is providing the operating costs of adding case managers and the United Way grant is backing them with funds for direct costs of services, like assistance in utility bills or rent.

The case managers will work with families and guide them through whatever range of help they might need, such as physical health and mental health counseling, financial counseling and budget planning, nutrition needs and relief from housing stress.

Hickman Mills and Grandview are joining the Family Stability Initiative already in place in the Kansas City Public Schools and in the Independence, Blue Springs and Shawnee Mission school districts.

A case manager can help a family work through the crisis and begin to shape “a long-term strategy,” Casey said. “We know that children fall academically behind when they move school-to-school and experience trauma.”

The success of the grant program will be measured in better student attendance and school performance because those are the beneficial fruits when parents can focus on their children’s education.

“Anything we can do,” MacDonald said, “to help a family in distress get to stability has a positive effect for the whole community.”