Here's how social workers are training to help families moving out of Norfolk public housing

March 12-- Mar. 12--NORFOLK -- As the city prepares to move 4,200 people out of public housing and redevelop St. Paul's, it will need to help residents start their new lives one person at a time.

Caseworkers like Danique Woodhouse have spent the past couple of weeks sitting down with the first 187 families set to move out starting this summer.

"They're scared, but they're excited," Woodhouse said.

A slight, bespectacled young woman, Woodhouse has spent the past couple of years with NRHA, initially helping residents find employment.

Now she and other housing authority and city staffers have been pressed into service to aid the first wave of departing families, thanks to delays in finding an outside firm to lead Norfolk's "People First" program. A contractor is now expected to be hired later this year to run the program for the rest of St. Paul's.

Woodhouse is charged with helping 43 families from Tidewater Gardens as they prepare to move out of the neighborhood later this year.

The city and NRHA staff are hoping two intertwined new programs -- a method for assessing people's needs and a network to find them help -- will get residents the services they need to stand on their own.

Last week, a national group called Empath came in to train city and NRHA staff, including Woodhouse, on their "mobility mentoring model."

The crux of Empath's program is a map that charts needs like housing, employment and education and asks residents to identify where they fall on a spectrum from having nothing to problem solved.

The grid lets residents think about long-term planning, which often proves difficult for those in poverty who have to constantly deal with immediate problems, said Jennifer Lowe, an Empath staffer who came to Norfolk for the training.

It also allows caseworkers to take a wider look at someone's life, which helps because problems are often interconnected. It's hard to make time for classes or hold down a regular job if you're a parent without reliable childcare, for instance.

Since Norfolk launched the St. Paul's redevelopment in earnest, it has said People First would take a holistic approach to improving residents' self-sufficiency.

Woodhouse, the NRHA caseworker, said she's all for anything that will help get folks comfortable and talking.

But she said she plans to use the grid a little differently. Trainers told those assembled at the Kroc Center last week to put the document in front of residents and encourage them to set goals themselves.

The local version includes 10 categories, which Woodhouse thinks would overwhelm residents.

"In an initial conversation, you can't cover all that stuff," Woodhouse said. She also thinks it may discourage them, because many are starting from the bottom in a lot of categories.

But she said the grid will help her be more organized -- and once the person has made some progress toward some of their goals, she may bring it out to help talk about what's next and to say "look at how far you've come" as a bit of positive reinforcement.

More than a phone number

It helps to have a social worker as a guide. But the other half of getting St. Paul's residents what they need is finding someone who can actually provide it.

City and NRHA caseworkers for St. Paul's will use an application called Unite Us, created by the United Way, that's meant to do a better job connecting people directly to services. NRHA has already been using it for several months and already plans to expand its use beyond St. Paul's.

Luciano Ramos, who oversees the program and others for United Way of South Hampton Roads, said there are a ton of groups already providing some specific set of services in St. Paul's.

It's all too common, Ramos said, for someone dedicated to one kind of service to be asked to help a family with something else. For instance, a nonprofit helping someone get a job is told, "By the way, I need child care to work this job."

Often, that would result in the worker either taking it upon themselves to make several calls and then follow up with the family, or handing the family a sheet with the phone numbers of groups that may or may not be able to help.

Instead of making a bunch of calls, caseworkers using Unite Us can put in a direct request via the app based on the need -- in this case, child care -- and quickly get direct responses of who is available and what they provide.

"The city, quite frankly, didn't have a good system for doing intra-agency referrals," Ramos said. "We're trying to get everyone talking, and talking the same language."

Kim Thomas, who heads community engagement for NRHA, said that's a huge benefit for those working in the community to get people help.

"Once you've built that trust with a resident, just handing them a phone number chips away at that trust," she said.

Better coordination between agencies also helps keep information consistent and correct to maintain that trust, Thomas said.

NRHA is going to start using Unite Us across all of its social services. Whether it will continue to be the standard in St. Paul's, however, is yet to be seen.

Thomas and Ramos both noted that whoever is hired under the city's People First program will decide for themselves if they want to adopt the mentoring model and Unite Us.

"We know this model can work and this tool can work," Ramos said. "What we hope is they see the value."

The city has said it expects initial discussion with all 187 families who are moving in the first phase to be done by the middle of this month. The first move-outs are expected this summer.

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