Would your family be willing to provide emotional support to a family in crisis?

Read on to understand the details of this new homelessness prevention program.

Adopt a Family will help very low income families in crisis, offering financial assistance and emotional support to prevent homelessness and provide family stability. Adopt a Family believes every family deserves respect, dignity and a place to call home. Through financial aid and emotional support we strive to prevent homelessness of very low income families with dependent children that are affected by the current economic crisis, to enable these families to preserve their status as stable and productive members of the community.

Adopt A Family assistance will primarily include the following areas:

• short-term or medium-term rental assistance
• housing relocation and stabilization services
• mediation and outreach to property owners
• security and utility deposits
• moving cost assistance

Adopt A Family is an Emergency Assistance Program that combines objectives of homeless prevention already identified in the 10 Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness in Kern County. Adopt A Family would be a program to assist families in their move from crisis to self sufficiency. Adopt A Family Emergency Assistance Program would not only provide financial aid to families in crisis but case management and pairing of the families with a similarly composed family that would offer additional emotional support. Families would be recruited to adopt a family in crisis and trained to be a support through difficult times. Families adopting other families would be encouraged to provide a weekly phone call, a meal on occasion, and holiday or birthday gifts as appropriate. Families would be recruited to support crisis families through local churches county wide.

Adopt A Family will maintain strict eligibility criteria for acceptance into the Emergency Assistance Program. Referrals to Adopt A Family come from school district personnel and churches and other well positioned organizations working with families with dependent children in crisis. Each family will complete an extensive questionnaire prior to an interview and evaluation by a program manager. If adopted, the client enters into a written contract. Progress and needs are regularly reviewed and a detailed case management file is maintained.

Flood Bakersfield Ministries, Inc. is currently launching a small pilot of the Adopt A Family Emergency Assistance Program with Standard School District.

Eligibility Criteria

• The family must consist of at least one parent and one dependent child under 18
• The family must live in Kern County, California
• A fundamental change in circumstance must have occurred in the family
  • job loss
  • illness
  • domestic violence
  • tenant victim of foreclosure
• The family must have a monthly income below 50% AMI ($2,034 per month) if other significant risk factors are identified, in most cases the eligibility criteria will be below 30% AMI ($1,223 per month)
• The family must be at immediate risk of homelessness
  • eviction action
  • overcrowding where families are doubled up
  • no longer be able to stay at their current location
  • lacks resources or support network needed to remain in existing housing
• The family must have no evidence of substance abuse for at least six months
• The family must have some source of income, however small
• The family must be willing to participate in case management
• The parent must complete an extensive application form, including a signed release allowing the case manager to verify the financial information provided

Other key identifying risk factors would be:

The family has experienced 2 moves in the past year

The parent was previously in foster care

The family has had a prior episode of homelessness

The parent or child exhibits signs of mental illness

The family has a prior eviction

The family has experienced a recent traumatic event

A member of the family has a physical disability or chronic health issue

Please contact the Flood office at 32-FLOOD to learn more and sign up to be a support family.