Los Angeles invests hundreds of millions each year to alleviate homelessness, but the networks that underlie those efforts are often held together by legal pads and spreadsheets.
It took a person who's suffered through the system to try to update it, so that the homeless and their advocates can get what they need, when they need it.
<p>Anthony Greco is one of the few people who can say he's been on most sides of the issue. He's lived on the streets, dealt with homeless family members and friends, he's worked in the shelters and counseled people dealing with substance abuse. </p><p>"I've literally been on every side of this problem in one way or another," Greco says. "I've been trying to get people into treatment in some way or another since I was seven years old." </p><p>The <a href="https://gethelp.com/" target="_blank">Get Help platform</a> is a result of his lifetime of experience with substance abuse and homelessness. And it's been so effective that Los Angeles took it from beta to a basic tool in the city's plan to deal with one of its largest emergencies: Getting homeless people off the street during the COVID-19 pandemic. </p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://dot.la/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzQzMzM1NS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NzY5OTgwMX0.7eDL5buGrN3-zWx64wg-r-UifhEv58FVH1ClrIbymYU/image.jpg?width=1500&coordinates=0%2C0%2C0%2C213&height=2000" id="1fb5c" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0d445795aa26f52ac878ded21dc78655" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Anthony Greco is the founder of the Get Help app.
A Lifetime Getting People Help
<p>Greco grew up bouncing from house to house while his mother sought help at substance abuse clinics. </p><p>"When I was 15 years old, one day I came home from school and my mom and her boyfriend and that family had moved away out of town," Greco says, "and the house was empty except for all the stuff in my room."</p><p>That led him into his own struggle first with homelessness, then with substance abuse and finally into recovery and toward helping people in the same circumstances he'd once found himself in. Ultimately, he got his PhD in clinical psychology and worked with patients with substance abuse issues.</p><p>But at every step in his career, Greco found himself trying to solve the same problem: How do you match a person to the services they need at the moment they're willing to ask for help? Having real-time information is key, he says. </p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://dot.la/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzQzNjYxNi9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzODc5ODI0MH0.3xsNqy-1Ee3MrHvS7CVTABFjEC0EqdlJMzCiealG38U/image.png?width=980" id="9c73a" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="b7a969c077329d108656d8fb8d20400e" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
<p>"There's a point when someone says that they want to get help," he says. "It's a simultaneous feeling of excitement and absolute dread at the same time, because on one hand, you're so excited that they want to get help and they want to go somewhere and then on the other hand the next thought is where am I going to go? Where am I going to call with how am I going to find an available bed? And it's a nightmare."</p><p>Once someone is willing to get help, the next question is where, and how? Greco describes calling rehab and shelter facilities as a child, as a homeless man and as a clinical psychologist to find a client or friend a bed, only to find that facilities were full or not accepting new residents, or that no one at the center seemed to have an idea of whether they had a place to stay.</p><p>Later, he encountered the same problem from the other end of the phone line when he was working at those same facilities.</p><p>"I remember getting calls, late at night," Greco says. "It was a mom on the other end of the phone wanting to know whether I have space for their son or daughter. And I didn't even know what our census was."</p><p>Had he known the headcount, he would have known how many available beds there were.</p>
<p><br/></p><h3>If Getting Shelter Were As Easy As Ordering an Uber</h3><p>The idea for the app came when Greco, now a psychologist, found himself unable to get the same basic information he was seeking as a kid.</p><p>"I realized that it was just as difficult for a licensed clinical psychologist to get someone into treatment as it was for a seven year old." </p><p>Greco had pictured a simple app that would match the world of homeless needs to the world of resources available to them. </p><p>"I said, you know, there has to be an app for that," he says. "You can order a pizza at four o'clock in the morning, or a cheeseburger from Sonic and have it delivered from Pomona, but there's no tool to be able to find a bed for my friend."</p><p>Greco quickly realized that if he wanted to be able to offer immediate help, he needed more than a list of numbers; he needed accurate real-time data. Who had open beds right now, tailored to specific needs of individuals — with substance abuse problems, with mental health problems, with kids, with domestic abuse trauma, with medical needs?</p><p>He had a vision for the app, but he didn't have a background in tech or business. Luckily, as he searched for funding for the idea, he came across <a href="https://gethelp.com/about/michael-root/" target="_blank">Michael Root</a>, one of the early engineering pioneers at Riot Games, who quickly volunteered to be Get Help's CTO. The company registered as a public benefit corporation in 2019. </p><p>"I had no idea what I was getting into," Greco says.</p><h3><span></span>Solving Problems for Homeless People<br/></h3><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://dot.la/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzQzMzM1Ni9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyMDk0MTk5M30.-NgVZtA6sG5pXrbmbk8vbgvAaWn_3mRzFEPOIjYvcjw/image.jpg?width=980" id="d82e3" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="84e75b0649fa663502d866ff1fa0deeb" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
</p><p>Greco says it usually takes between 6 and 7 approaches (<a href="https://www.presstelegram.com/2019/05/14/outreach-workers-are-crucial-to-connecting-homeless-to-services-cal-state-long-beach-study-finds/" target="_blank">sometimes more</a>) before someone who's experiencing homelessness will accept help — and often the kind of help people on the street are looking for isn't what street teams have to offer. </p><p>"The first service that they often will accept isn't a bed," says Greco, "but they'll accept a place where they can go get a meal." </p><p>Greco says it's critical to seize those moments, where a person is willing to ask for some kind of help, if only to build trust. </p><p>"It's about meeting the person where they're at," Greco says. "And that's what I do as a therapist."</p><p>In other words, he says focus on building trust, and provide people what they need, rather than what you think they need. Not everyone is looking for a shelter bed.</p><p>"That's where I operate from and where Get Help operates from," he says. </p><p>The app tries to reflect this by listing a range of services both big and small from shelter and sober living beds to food pantries, showers, laundry, storage facilities and health care services. All those services are what social workers call a continuum of care that will eventually lead to stability, he says.</p><h3>Solving the Problem for Shelters<br/></h3><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://dot.la/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzQzMzM2MC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwMTM0NzIwN30.CdI0rB4pc1AwQcrcr0qkvnVDEbKrwuWqmnszbS4UjPI/image.jpg?width=980" id="61c6b" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="258713e7ebd6315399724677fe405e02" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption..."> Greco at the Weingart Center in Los Angeles' Skid Row.</small></p><p>On the other end of the spectrum, Greco realized that if he wanted to be able to solve family members' 4 a.m. emergencies, he'd have to work with the shelters to get the data that would be crucial to getting their loved ones fast help. </p><p>What he quickly found was that many of these shelters and sober living facilities were using outdated tools to keep track of who was in their facility. </p><p>"They were still managing their inventory — and still are — is literally using yellow pads, sometimes whiteboards, Excel documents and email exchanges." </p><p>They reached out to the Weingart Center, one of the first shelters in Skid Row that specializes in providing emergency housing for people with mental illness. By the estimate of its current CEO, the company houses about 600 people nightly, and provides counseling, employment and other other services to thousands more. All of that requires an incredible amount of record keeping. </p><p>"In order to really run an operation," says Weingart's CEO, Kevin Murray, "you've got to do intake, you've got to assign room, you've got to assign food cards."</p><p>In addition, you have to make sure you're collecting the information that health insurers and the federal government require, as well as making sure you're tracking the basic needs — linen and toothbrushes, for example — of the people you're serving. </p><p>"Almost every provider is inputting this practice information in, you know, at least two, maybe multiple systems." </p><p>Greco's team met with Weingart to develop a data management system that could help them track that information.</p><p>"They actually sat down with our people at all levels to find out what they needed, and what would be helpful to them," Murray says. "We both sort of opened up to each other about what we wanted to do. And so we were participants in developing the system."</p><p>The result, Greco says, saved Weingart time and money by cutting down the number of steps that shelter staff had to take to do intake and reducing the number of data entry mistakes they made. </p><p>"Those errors result in billing errors," and those billing errors and mistakes can result in a place like The Weingart Center losing millions a year in funding opportunities.</p><p>It also made the information on how many beds the center had at any given time easily accessible, so that Get Help's app could make them available to service providers on the streets looking to get people housed.</p><p>"it's certainly, you know, added a lot of simplicity in our lives," Murray says.<br/></p><h3>From Pilot Test to a Citywide Crisis</h3><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://dot.la/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzQzMzM3My9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwODYzNjE0Nn0.CjM02WZve2UrNvT1NH-4aOTBhbxLEK7iJR1eO_JoI6I/image.jpg?width=980" id="df49d" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="347c78916d2fef22507a2f4846d5561a" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">An estimated 82,955 people fell into homelessness during 2019 in L.A County, and an estimated 52,689 people found the way out of homelessness in that time, <a href="https://www.lahsa.org/homeless-count/" target="_blank">according to the county's most recent data.</a><a href="https://www.lahsa.org/homeless-count/" target="_blank"></a></small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Photo courtesy of Get Help</small></p><p>In late 2019, Get Help worked out a pilot program with a small faction of LAPD officers who patrol Skid Row and other areas to assist with routine clean ups of homeless encampments. </p><p>The officers in LAPD's Homeless Outreach and Proactive Engagement (HOPE) team downloaded the Get Help app and used it to direct the homeless folks they encountered to services in the area. </p><p>"The response was overwhelmingly positive," Greco says, adding that some officers reported it had changed the dynamic between some of their patrol and homeless in the area. Officers had real-time information they could offer to homeless folks, and their role went beyond enforcement to being able to offer assistance. </p><p>After six months, the plan was to expand the app's use in the city, when an even larger crisis hit.</p><p>"We had just got through a successful pilot with L.A. (city) and we're talking about expanding it, we were doing work on expanding to a different additional shelters, (and) we were starting conversations with L.A. County," Greco says, "And COVID-19 hit." </p><p>The city settled on an emergency plan to house vulnerable homeless people in recreation centers and other city facilities that had closed due to the pandemic. </p><p>Jimmy Kim oversees emergency operations for Los Angeles's recreation and parks department. He was tasked with creating the shelters, developing a system for keeping track of its inhabitants, and keeping them safe.</p><p>"The systems that we're using are so archaic," Kim says. "You know that saying, 'time is money', right?"</p><p>At first the city relied on regular manual headcounts, pen and paper and Google docs to keep a tally of those staying at its sites. It quickly found that process was inefficient. </p><p>"And so we came across (the app) in the mayor's office," says Kim. "They actually introduced us to the folks over at Get Help as part of a pilot program." </p><p>The app allowed them to streamline the process, and provided the mayor's office with real time information on the number and location of beds occupied. </p><p>"The quicker we could get them (registered), the quicker we could get people in," Kim says. "And then the less time they have to spend on doing registration, the more time they could spend on doing more important things."</p><p>The system proved a success, allowing Kim to keep track of registrations and discharges at the 24 shelters the agency oversaw, and allowing his staff of around 94 employees access to real-time data on who was where. </p><p>"I actually want to take that and use it for our normal shelters as well because it'll help us streamline that process and get real time usable data," Kim says. "You know, literally at the tip of your fingertips." </p><p>The department is now thinking about configuring the app to do contract tracing for shelter residents who come down with COVID-19, and it's thinking about expanding beyond the homeless emergency function, to other emergencies that require rapid sheltering — such as wildfires and earthquakes. </p><p>"Now, we're having those conversations," says Kim, "because I think it will help us streamline and get data a lot quicker… And if you have real-time data, you can make better decisions that way." </p><p>Meanwhile, Get Help is available to individuals, organizations and outreach workers in Apple's <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/get-help-app/id1319554390?ls=1" target="_blank">App Store</a> and <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=help.get.gethelp.city.la" target="_blank">Google Play</a>. His team is working with several large local shelters and sober living facilities and the county to expand the data available in Get Help's app that can be used by families, street teams and concerned residents looking for immediate help.<br/></p>Related Articles Around the Web
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LA Tech Updates: LA's Largest VC is Now a Public Benefit Corp; Treehouse Games Raises $2.6M
Jun 24 2020
Here are the latest updates on news affecting Los Angeles' startup and tech communities. Sign up for our newsletter and follow dot.LA on Twitter for more.
Today:
- LA's Largest VC is Now a Public Benefit Corp
- Treehouse Games Raises $2.6M
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'Collaborative' Game-Maker Treehouse Games Raises $2.6M
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vbWVkaWEucmJsLm1zL2ltYWdlP3U9JTJGWVc4cDBCbS1seTVyU3REc2J4T0Niem1QemV0YlRsZUNHZ1J3MkdURnhkLWhRaERKSW5yTXIxb19jN1FLTlI2Um5Vbld4UHlBbkRsWFNMRTdORm9pZ3JDa0c4ejI4UFdZdHAxeU5ORFcyOTBZeTBaREc2QmJxOVR2T3l4cXJ5dW1MOEJvMkNfTSZobz1odHRwcyUzQSUyRiUyRmxoNC5nb29nbGV1c2VyY29udGVudC5jb20mcz05NTkmaD04Yzg4NzAxZThiNDVlZmVjOGJiYTQxZmFkY2NjZGZmZmRhN2Y4MmIxMTc2ZTNkYTI4MmFkOTljODg5YzNjMjk2JnNpemU9OTgweCZjPTI4MjI3NzI2NDEiLCJleHBpcmVzX2F0IjoxNTk3MzE5OTUxfQ.s0DCaH-qmyZ3A7dfuM-nULqakx_8COLkpCEDjhlswXY/img.jpg" id="62cf3" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="7dbfceb4415180910add0cc6fae1f567" /><p>Treehouse Games, founded by former Riot Games product lead Michael Chu and indie games studio veteran Ryan Sullivan, has raised $2.6 million in seed funding. The studio will focus on making collaborative games "to serve a growing, global audience of millions of people who use games as their favorite way to hang out," the company said in a statement.</p><p>London Venture Partners (LVP) led the funding round. Bay Area-based Transcend Fund and Super Evil Megacorp CEO Kristian Segestrale also participated.</p><p>Chu and Sullivan told dot.LA that "it's too early to go into specifics about the game, but our team is hard at work building an innovative cooperative game to bring friends and family together."</p><p>"We want to create games that give you that feeling of camaraderie during a road trip, or the sense of generosity you get when buying your friend a cup of coffee," the founders said.</p>Fifth Wall Venture Firm Is Now a B Corporation
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://dot.la/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzQxNTAyNi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTU5NDg4MDY5OX0.NOfRuXjcD7OZJun-sbNkeUpzJt9aLNizjAC3IVOhCc8/image.jpg?width=980" id="57d56" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d048356cf99bbffa853c196187622614" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" /> <p>Fifth Wall announced this week it is now a Certified B Corporation or "B Corp," which means it is legally required to consider the impact of its decisions on workers, customers, suppliers, community, and the environment.</p><p><a href="https://fifthwall.com/" target="_blank">Fifth Wall</a> is the largest venture capital firm focused on real estate tech, known as proptech. It announced the close of its second real estate technology fund last year, with $503 million in dry powder, making it the largest VC fund in Los Angeles. </p><p>"It is incumbent upon all of us to take actionable steps towards building a more equitable and sustainable society," said Brendan Wallace, co-founder and managing partner at Fifth Wall. "We're grateful to the resources and community offered by B Lab to help our firm as we continue to educate ourselves and make changes within our own organization."</p><p>Fifth Wall is now part of a cohort of 3,939 other B-Corps that include names like Ben & Jerry's, Allbirds, and Patagonia.</p><p>The real estate industry accounts for 40% of the world's consumption of energy and Fifth Wall says it is ready to help make construction more sustainable. Earlier this year, the firm announced a new carbon impact fund.</p>From Your Site Articles
- The Future of Real Estate: Bigger Offices and Smaller Chains - dot.LA ›
- dot.LA Strategy Session: Office 2021, in Partnership with HelloOffice ›
- The Future of Real Estate: Bigger Offices and Smaller Chains - dot.LA ›
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My first indication that COVID-19 was going to dramatically impact foster youth came on March 11 and it came from Los Rios Community College District, the second largest community college district in California, with over 75,000 students. The school sent an emergency email that they would be closing their four colleges and six educational centers, and moving to online classes for the rest of the semester. And they feared that many students, particularly foster youth, did not have the technology (laptops and an Internet connection) to make this change and risked failing their semester.
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They were right, based on our experience of more than 10 years trying to connect youth in care to the things they need to succeed in school and in the workplace. In 2016, iFoster participated in a University of Southern California study that found that 95% of rural foster youth, and 79% of urban foster youth, did not have access to a computer and the internet where they live. Up until now, technology access was viewed as a "nice to have," but not necessary for foster youth to function in today's society.<br/>
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March 11 changed that. Los Rios' email brought into stark focus that the relatively few foster youth who made it to college were at risk of failing and dropping out because they lacked the tools they needed. With only 8% of foster youth ever achieving a college degree, losing even one due to our failure to adequately provide for them is a travesty. We had to act.
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<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://dot.la/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzQwODUwOS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1NjEzMTQ0MX0.YI0dMcVB87LrA-M9V8vWfcZhlT0I3cNhhqWGiJCbl6M/image.jpg?width=980" id="30b0b" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="cccc9f207e9a5c55d0aa063ee4aaa74a" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
iFoster co-founder and CEO Serita Cox
Photo: iFoster
<p>In the 11 weeks of sheltering in place that soon followed, iFoster, John Burton Advocates for Youth, and the California Foster Youth Ombudsman's Office ran point on a mission to keep those youth connected, literally and figuratively. It involved almost 700 organizations and child welfare agencies, and resulted in the procurement and distribution of 6,630 smartphones and laptops.</p><p>This is the short version of how it all happened, and I hope it helps folks in other states plan for similar efforts this fall. If this can be done during stay-at-home orders in the country's most populous state, it can be done in any state, county or locality.</p><p>By the end of the day on March 11, we had the foundation of a plan figured out. We needed to start identifying college foster youth who needed the technology to survive academically, and then we needed to figure out how to pay for and actually acquire the phones and laptops, at a time when the demand for these was surging with every student in America basically learning from home.</p>
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The next day brought two big wins for this operation. First, California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office sent out directions to their 115 colleges that their foster youth would get the technology they need, and asked the administrations on those campuses to start getting rough estimates together for how many students qualified. This was the first of several key outreach efforts the got the ball rolling to actually define the universe of need.<br/>
</p><p>Second, the philanthropic sector quickly got the importance of the goal here. Long-term funders of iFoster's digital divide programming – Foster Care Counts, Walter S. Johnson and Ticket to Dream – stepped up with the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office, John Burton Advocates for Youth, California Wellness Foundation, LA Tech, Foundation for Community Colleges, Tipping Point, and a generous anonymous donor. These early investments were followed by an executive order from the Governor of California and public funding from California Department of Social Services</p><p>
By March 13, initial forecasts started pouring in from community colleges across the state. On March 16, the first specific requests identifying individual foster youth students and their needs came in. Before the first schools closed, laptops and smartphones for foster youth began arriving on college campuses for distribution. All of this happened prior to the statewide shelter-in-place order issued by Gov. Gavin Newsom on March 19.<br/>
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But many schools had already sent students home, and foster youth around the state were left to frantically figure out how to remain in class remotely and from afar. We needed to build a massive outreach machine that could through sheer volume find most of the youth in need around the state.
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<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vbWVkaWEucmJsLm1zL2ltYWdlP3U9JTJGd3AtY29udGVudCUyRnVwbG9hZHMlMkYyMDIwJTJGMDYlMkZTY3JlZW4tU2hvdC0yMDIwLTA2LTE1LWF0LTcuNTYuMDQtQU0ucG5nJmhvPWh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGY2hyb25pY2xlb2Zzb2NpYWxjaGFuZ2Uub3JnJnM9MTMxJmg9ZjdjNjI0NmI1ZThiZTI2MWQ1OThjMWEyMmRlOWY1MWY2ZTQzNjYzMTJhNTEwNjY2MDRhMTc2YTllNGVhODU0MCZzaXplPTk4MHgmYz00MjY1OTcyMjMyIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzOTAzNjQ3M30._MaAduahXkDYN937gplAv9Y5BjkueEJ-yNt-hk-48Qk/img.jpg" id="e9552" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="b52d981aba6c5a0bede8bbcd90734600" alt="" />
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">A member of Mira Costa Guardian Scholars program catalogs a shipment of laptops and phones for foster youth who will need them during the pandemic shutdown. </small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">
Photo: iFoster
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Key foster care organizations in California have been sharing resources and partnering on programs for years across child welfare, K-12 education and college. It was this foundation that was able to immediately react and invite new partners to the table to implement a plan.<br/>
</p><p>
College foster youth support programs like <a href="https://guardianscholars.com/our-program/" target="_blank">Guardian Scholars</a> reached out to their students to identify need. County child welfare departments, including the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, tasked their county social workers and probation officers to review their caseloads and find out which of their youth needed tech. Foster care liaisons at school districts across the state did the same, as did foster family organizations, court appointed special advocates, transitional housing providers and independent living programs.
</p><p>
With the process of finding recipients underway and financial commitments lined up from foundations, corporations and eventually the state, we then had to go and acquire the phones and laptops. And with demand for these products skyrocketing because of school closures, this is where California's existing infrastructure for connecting foster youth to technology paid off.
</p><p>
iFoster has provided over 6,000 laptops to foster youth since 2012 funded by very committed philanthropy. In the fall of 2019, just prior to the pandemic, iFoster launched a pilot program with the California Public Utilities Commission to provide all current and former foster youth between 13 and 26 with a smartphone that included unlimited voice, text and data that operates as an internet hotspot.
</p><p>
Having those types of arrangements was critical to mobilizing in an emergency. We did not have to cold call on manufacturers to source and ship laptops and phones – we already know and work with some. We did not have to completely invent pots of funding – we could augment ones that already existed.
</p><p>
It was this combination of having an existing collaboration, as well as scalable iFoster laptop and internet programs, that allowed California to respond so quickly to the connectivity needs of foster youth when the pandemic hit.
</p><p>
While outreach took an army of thousands, the process of getting the right technology to each youth was centralized at iFoster. We are a small virtual organization of nine employees, and we had to staff up quickly.
</p><p>
Year two of our "TAY AmeriCorps program" – where we <a href="https://chronicleofsocialchange.org/child-welfare-2/serving-the-future-california-foster-youth-start-americorps-adventure/34348" target="_blank">train and hire current and former foster youth</a> to be peer resource navigators to other foster youth – was scheduled to start in March. We brought on 25 foster youth in the Bay Area and Los Angeles who we felt could work effectively from their homes.
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<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vbWVkaWEucmJsLm1zL2ltYWdlP3U9JTJGd3AtY29udGVudCUyRnVwbG9hZHMlMkYyMDIwJTJGMDYlMkZKZXphYmVsLVRBLmpwZyZobz1odHRwcyUzQSUyRiUyRmNocm9uaWNsZW9mc29jaWFsY2hhbmdlLm9yZyZzPTU0MSZoPWNmNzgzNDI4MmRiMmJhYTg5MTM1NmM2MjJiODI4OTdiMDU1NmMxYjgzMDE0ZWJmNGY2OTBlZDgyZjllYzEyMzImc2l6ZT05ODB4JmM9MTk4NTA4MDExNCIsImV4cGlyZXNfYXQiOjE2MDEzOTExMDF9.mLD9VSkctyvJdQZI2BShWc-EuWazgTmSfbuDDu4B1g4/img.jpg" id="7073c" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="b5d1100f5ceb2b5e7f578ebe11237370" />
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">TAY AmeriCorps member Jezabel works on iFoster's intake team, establishing a list of youth who will receive laptops and phones.</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">
Photo: iFoster
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We work in teams. Our bilingual intake team answers phone, text and emails requests and ensures that every application has all the information required for approval. They hand off to our VAT team (verification, activation and tracking), which ensures there is no duplication in requests and validates with each youth or their caregiver the tech they need and their shipping address.<br/>
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As foster youth move frequently, ordering and shipping devices happen within one business day of validation. Our ordering team works closely with our third party logistic company, Rakuten Super Logistics, who fulfills and ships orders. Rakuten manages inventory, order priority and shipping flow.
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Phones require activation on the Boost telecom network, so our VAT team work feverishly to activate phones once they ship to ensure that every phone is ready to go when a foster youth receives them. Finally, our VAT team follows up with every recipient to provide shipping and tracking information and to ensure that every youth knows who to contact if they have any issues with their tech or with any other resources they may need.
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Clear roles, responsibilities and standard operating procedures are critical. However, it is the dedication of a team of transition-age foster youth and their supervisors managing them virtually that make this work.
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All told, this was a collaboration of 686 partners that included the state, 50 county child welfare departments, thousands of child welfare workers, college support teams, caregivers, mentors and foster youth themselves. We have collectively proven that bridging the digital divide for foster youth is a solvable problem, and one that can be replicated, before distance learning starts again this fall.
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<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vbWVkaWEucmJsLm1zL2ltYWdlP3U9JTJGd3AtY29udGVudCUyRnVwbG9hZHMlMkYyMDIwJTJGMDYlMkZZb3V0aC13LXBob25lLmpwZWcmaG89aHR0cHMlM0ElMkYlMkZjaHJvbmljbGVvZnNvY2lhbGNoYW5nZS5vcmcmcz02NzEmaD05ODljZDY2OThmNTI1OWUzY2Q4YzMwNDk2MDg1MDI2Y2M1NTcxODg2MDlkNzczM2U5ODFlMjc4MjY5YmQ3ODM4JnNpemU9OTgweCZjPTMxNjY2ODA4MTciLCJleHBpcmVzX2F0IjoxNjA5MjAwODkzfQ.iLOv_JN2t5YI-sZnGJQryU_W1qNs7JNSTpQc1Z0JoRE/img.jpg" id="662fb" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="03121b7e884a51adec6ceb3cad4c33e9" />
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">One of the thousands of current and former foster youth who received a phone through the partnership sent a photo of her new lifeline. </small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">
Photo: iFoster
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For those interested in stealing our playbook, I sincerely hope you do! We are planning to produce a more formal how-to guide on the project soon. But in terms of top-line recommendations, here are the four things to focus on…
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<strong>Build off philanthropy</strong>: In this crisis, the first and fastest funding came from philanthropy. However, to achieve scale, sustainable funding must come from the public sector.
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<strong>Diverse network to identify demand</strong>: Understanding who needs what is not an easy task. There is no centralized data system that tracks foster youth tech needs. However, every foster youth has their own support network they rely on.<br/>
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<strong>Unlimited Data is Key</strong>: The phones and laptops are only as valuable as the hotspot. Without that element, it will be hard for many of our foster youth students to connect from where they are.
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<strong>Centralized Distribution</strong>: It took a lot of partners to make this all work, but the actual process of receiving products and sending them out to youth had to be a tight operation with strict procedures in place.
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This collaboration continues to grow, with government funding adding to philanthropy. Not only will college foster youth have the technology they need to distance learn for as long as they need, but we are well on our way to ensuring that every high school foster youth will also have the tech they need, and there is every indication that our K-8 foster youth students will as well. As of June 12, this partnership has connected a total of 7,599 foster youth from 51 counties with tech, and we are still serving between 500 and 700 youth every week.
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Fall is coming and distance learning will be a reality again. We are confident that other states, counties and localities can replicate what we've accomplished in 11 weeks of COVID.
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We at iFoster are here to help. We are willing to provide technical support to any team nationwide who wants to ensure their youth go back to school with the technology they need. We will share our standard operating procedures, documents, templates and provide intros or allow others to leverage the partnerships we have already built to device wholesalers and telecom partners.
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<em>This column <a href="https://chronicleofsocialchange.org/child-welfare-2/eleven-weeks-686-partners-6630-phones-and-laptops/44468" target="_blank">first appeared in the Chronicle of Social Justice</a>. </em></p><p><em>Serita Cox is the co-founder and CEO of <a href="https://www.ifoster.org/about-us/" target="_blank">iFoster</a>, a nonprofit that aims to ensure every child growing up outside of their biological home has the resources and opportunities they need to become successful, independent adults.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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