We want to be the most case-manager-supportive organization in town.
This week we partnered with a local organization to help keep a guest’s electricity on and keep them from losing their housing. The person isn’t ours. They are working with a case manager at a partner agency who had already done the hardest part of the work: building trust, sitting through the hard conversations, filling out a detailed assistance application, tracking every deadline, and staying with it long enough for the pieces to line up.
We were able to get $300 approved through a community partner, and HRC is covering the rest through a work agreement, so they can earn it with dignity instead of just receiving it.
But the part that stuck with me wasn’t the outcome. It was what the case manager wrote afterward: “Thank you for all of your help with this, not only for my client, but for me as well. Having access to a resource like this makes my work significantly easier.”
Case management might be the hardest job in our community. It’s carrying a caseload of people in crisis, knowing that the resource that would fix everything exists somewhere in town, and spending hours on the phone trying to find out who has it, whether it’s still funded, and what form is required this month. The work is emotionally heavy on its own. The scavenger hunt on top of it is what burns people out.
So here’s one of the biggest goals I have for the Homeless Resource Center: we want to be the most case-manager-supportive organization in town. That means being easy to reach and easy to say yes to. It means closing the access and communication gap between guests and the people trying to serve them. It means offering office space where those conversations can happen somewhere safe, private, and forward-moving, instead of in a parking lot or a lobby.
If we can make a case manager’s job even slightly lighter, that lightness goes straight to the people they serve. Multiply that across every case manager in Lawrence and it’s a different community!
To every case manager reading this: thank you for the work you put in every day. The people you serve are lucky to have you. We want to be the reason your job gets easier.
To everyone else: behind every person you see in crisis in this community, there is a team working to close the gap between that crisis and the answers that are so hard to find. Please extend grace to everyone in that equation.
We’re grateful to be a partner for our whole community.
Brett Hartford, Executive Director