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How it Works

The Family Promise program provides an ideal solution for family homelessness because it is easily replicable and flexible enough to address the needs of each community.

There are five key components to the Family Promise program:

• Family Promise of Washington County: a network of congregations that host families overnight in their church building to meet the immediate needs for shelter, meals and comprehensive support services.  
   
• Family Mentoring: a community building program that partners trained volunteers with at-risk families to support their journey as they strive to achieve goals and maintain self-sufficiency.
   
• Just Neighbors: a six part interactive educational program that raises awareness of poverty and homelessness to support community-based responses.
   
• Community Initiatives: outgrowth programs such as transitional housing, housing renovation, job training, health care services, childcare and literacy.
   
• Voices Uniting: a program to promote public policies that alleviate poverty and improve the well-being of low-income families.

Day Center

Family Promise operates a Day Shelter House that serves as a home base for families during the daytime.  At the Day House each families has their own private room.  The day house is a home where they can store their food, prepare breakfast and lunch, care for their children, shower, do laundry and access participate in onsite case management (a requirement of the program) to work towards becoming self-sufficient and moving into a home of their own.

Guests have access to the Shelter Day House from 7:00 AM to 5:00 PM, where they meet with a Case Manager, who provides case management services, resources and referrals.  The day center provides guests with a mailing address and a base for housing and employment searches.  Many guests are employed during the day, and older children attend school.

Provide a safe overnight shelter at local church congregations.  Families rotate weekly among the congregations. Each host congregation provides overnight sleeping accommodations in a private room (classroom, nursery, library, etc) set aside for each families and 2 overnight volunteers also sleep at the church to provide a safe caring community. 

Volunteers

Volunteers are the heart of the program.  Trained volunteers share their time and talents in many ways, usually just for a few hours during the hosting week.

• Cooking and serving meals
• Playing with children and helping them with homework
• Staying overnight with guest families
• Providing specialized services, like resume writing or financial counseling
• Just being there for children and their families, showing them compassion and respect, and sharing a sense of community

The Family Promise Shelter Program offers several programs to help communities understand homelessness and focus on programs to change lives. We focus on programs to change lives and strengthen communities.