Two organizations are partnering on a $2.5 million plan to improve support for homeless mothers and their families in central Arkansas, according to a news release from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
UAMS and Our House, a Little Rock nonprofit serving homeless and near-homeless populations, announced the Home Together Project Tuesday, which aims to improve mental health and parenting support services, the release states.
"We learn more and more about the anxiety, the depression, the trauma that homelessness creates … today we’re going to get a lot better,” Ben Goodwin, executive director at Our House, said at a news conference.
The program focuses on families that include a pregnant woman or mother of young children who also has a mental illness and is experiencing homelessness, according to the release.
Funding for the project comes from a $2.5 million grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
According to the statement, the project incorporates behavioral health care into an existing homeless prevention program at Our House. The Central Arkansas Family Stability Institute provides services to homeless families to help them achieve self-sufficiency.
Though the institute has a 93 percent success rate in helping families avoid an episode or return to homelessness, lack of access to mental health services has been a significant challenge to the program’s growth and effectiveness, officials said.
“Many of the women are homeless due to mental health issues,” Cindy Crone, an advanced practice registered nurse with the UAMS Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health, said. “Through cooperation and coordination among multiple providers, this grant will allow Our House to reach even more women with behavioral health, primary care, and prenatal care as well as other critical parenting and community living needs.”
Arkansas has the fourth worst child homelessness problem in the U.S., officials said, and at UAMS roughly 30 babies are discharged every month to mothers struggling with mental illness or substance abuse who are homeless or near homeless, according to release.
Read Wednesday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.