Program connects county services

Allen County Connectors, a newly launched program initiated by Thrive Allen County and funded by the REACH Healthcare Foundation, has established a single helpline by which the community can access the majority of its emergency and non-emergency resources. By dialing 620-228-5110 during normal business hours, the caller will be put in touch with a member of the group’s core volunteer staff — known as “connectors” — who will bring to the exchange a comprehensive knowledge of the area’s service agencies and the ability to connect the caller to the agency that best addresses his or her dilemma.
This new effort answers a need that many community leaders have recognized as flagrant for years.
Whether the lay citizen realizes it or not, on an almost daily basis individuals and families arrive on the doorstep of one or another of Allen County’s civic offices to ask for help. When that organization — church, library, non-profit — can offer help, it does. But very often the request for food or shelter or transportation or childcare exceeds the boundaries of what that institution is set up to provide. At this point, the distressed individuals or families, their minds already consumed with the insecurity of their situation, are thrown back on themselves to figure out where to turn next.
Who are they supposed to call on now?

THE inaugural team of volunteers includes lead connector Angela Murphy, the county’s 911 director; Michelle Meiwes, Hope Unlimited; Susan Booth, of McIntosh-Booth Insurance; LaDonna Krone, of the Humboldt Food Pantry; and Georgia Masterson, Thrive. The formation of the program grew in large part out of the planning acumen of Thrive’s grant writer, John Robertson, and the nonprofit’s program director, Damaris Kunkler.
Each volunteer brings to the task, along with their professional expertise, insights amassed during recent training courses. Allen County Connectors has hosted weekly meetings, where they’ve invited instruction from organizations as varied as SEK-CAP, the Community Health Center, SHICK (Medicare counselors), the local commodities program, and more.
Assuming one of the five volunteers (or their trained backups) is unable to address the caller’s concern directly, she is fully educated on how best to connect that person with the proper resource agency.
The Connectors helpline is not only, or even primarily, for citizens in immediate distress. According to an early flyer, the group will assist individuals with credit problems, job training, acquiring affordable health care, tax difficulties, threats of eviction, financial planning — “ANY problem at all.”
This is not only a resource for the individual in need, but also for the institution (church, library, doctor’s office, small business) to whom that individual or family makes its original appeal.

IN 2010, the Allen County Multi-Agency Team (ACMAT), under co-chair Angela Murphy, designed a pocket resource guide, listing the nearly 100 service agencies in the county to which a person in need might apply for information or assistance — categories including transportation, schooling, housing, legal services, childcare, among 14 other headings. The guide was updated and revised in 2013.
Today, Murphy, in conjunction with Thrive, is developing an even more ambitious, fully annotated version of that guide, which could be distributed to businesses, charities, government offices, or any other county outpost that makes regular contact with the public. 
The primary goal of Allen County Connectors is to coordinate the area’s huge number of resources into an efficient, user-friendly service that allows area citizens to make full use of the community service agencies as they were originally intended. It is a premise based on the understanding that however rich a county is in resources, their benefits are wasted if the local population has consistent difficulty accessing them.
“I think a lot times people look at our community and think there aren’t these resources,” said Murphy. “But they’re here. It’s just knowing the right place to go, and maybe having someone who can show you where to find them.”
 Contact Connectors at 620-228-5110 Monday – Friday, 8:30 a.m. — 5 p.m. or by email at [email protected].