Monday, March 27, 2000
Agencies to share location?
Plan to unite social services
BY SUSAN VELA
The Cincinnati Enquirer
COVINGTON — A former YMCA building could become a “social service mall,” where a family could seek all sorts of help.
The Kentucky Cabinet for Families and Children, which already has offices at the 624 Madison Ave. building, is leading the effort to open such a facility.
Mental health, substance abuse, food stamps, child support, senior citizen and other social services could be represented at this mall to serve thousands of people throughout Northern Kentucky.
Proponents think it will lessen paperwork and become a more efficient means of helping those in need.
“If (the services are) all in one facility, we can be more efficient in helping folks. The client deserves that,” said Deanna Skees, the retired executive director of Northern Kentucky Area Development District. She has been involved in planning the new social service mall.
Others involved are Forward Quest, Brighton Center, Children's Inc., Welcome House, North Key Community Care, Campbell County Human Services, Northern Kentucky Health Department, and the Northern Kentucky Housing and Homeless Coalition.
Forward Quest, a Covington group focused on Northern Kentucky's future, began pursuing the concept of a social service mall about five years ago.
While a task force committee began discussing the project, the state Cabinet for Families and Children was placing more focus on partnering with the community and improved relations with families.
Forward Quest and the cabinet began working together about a year ago.
Joel Griffith, of the Cabinet's Covington office, said it's too soon to say how much the facility will cost, where it will be, and which agencies will be represented there.
But he'd like to have a working plan that addresses these questions within the next three months.
“At this point, this is a warm and fuzzy idea we have,” he said. Yet “my dream would be to have something like this in every county. A family should be able to walk into one place and have one person say, "How can I help you?' and "What are your needs?'”
He gave an example of how social service clients are now served by the Cabinet. He noted that an unemployed woman might have one child failing in school, another with emotional problems and a husband who abuses drugs or alcohol.
The cabinet now would direct her to at least four agencies, each one geared toward addressing those individual problems. The necessary time, travel and paperwork might be too much, and the individual agencies might not be focused on the betterment of the family as a whole, he said.
Mr. Griffith noted that Covington's social services mall would be modeled after one of the “neighborhood places” in the Louisville area. The first started in 1993. Now there are seven.
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