LITTLE ROCK -- Last fall, Salvation Army Maj. Bill Mockabee and Matthew DeSalvo went to the Arkansas Capitol on a mission.
Mockabee, the area commander of the Central Arkansas branch of the Salvation Army, and DeSalvo, its director of social services, had been invited to take part in and present to the state Legislature's Mental Health/Behavioral Health Working Group.
The event was a forum where service providers, legislators and community members addressed the mental health issues that are pervasive in their service areas.
It was the first time either man had ever advocated before the government for policy changes.
DeSalvo recalled that many of the people who spoke "were not giving the legislators any kind of policy or directives that they could go on to actually make change."
"We talked about how mental health is plaguing our population that we serve and our experience with them not being able to get the help that they need," DeSalvo said.
In the middle of the meeting, DeSalvo received a text message from Sen. Clarke Tucker, D-Little Rock, wanting to talk to the men personally.
"I reached out to him and told him how impressed I was with his presentation," Tucker said.
It was an eye-opening moment for DeSalvo.
"That was the catalyst for when I realized like, 'wow, we actually are the subject matter experts and we actually have a forum created that we can speak to, for and about our population that we serve," DeSalvo said.
What led Mockabee and DeSalvo to step into the advocacy fray at the Capitol?
First, the desire to help improve systems that were allowing people it intended to help to slip through the cracks.
"People are not even hitting the safety nets, whatsoever," Mockabee said. "There are ways for us to be able to speak up for them because we have this platform to be able to speak up for the voiceless and say 'this needs to change.' The social safety nets are great, but they're not helping the people the way that they're intended to."
Then there was the friendly push in the right direction given to them by state Rep. Denise Ennett, D-Little Rock.
It occurred in May 2022 at one of the Salvation Army's Love Beyond Tours, a regular event meant to show people everything the organization does at its shelter, located in downtown Little Rock.
Mockabee said it was simple as Ennett providing advice on who to network with in their advocacy efforts, which eventually led to them being invited to the mental health forum.
"She was one of the first ones to attend Love Beyond," Mockabee said. "I don't think she understands how pivotal she was in getting us moving in that direction."
When told this, Ennett said she was "floored."
"Sometimes you do something, you never know if you have any reach, or if anybody ever pays attention to you," Ennett said. "That's not actually my district, but I understand the importance of their work."
Ennett said the work that organizations like the Salvation Army does "fill a void and if I can help in any way to get them funding and get money for them to continue their great service, then I try my best to do that."
TRANSPORTATION ISSUE
In addition to his role with the Salvation Army, DeSalvo is also president of Central Arkansas Team Care for the Homeless [CATCH], a nonprofit group with representatives from 12 entities in the area. In addition to the Salvation Army, there are people from St. Francis House, the city of Little Rock, Our House, River City Ministry and more.
Together they produced a flyer -- paid for by the Arkansas division of Americans for Prosperity -- detailing policies they're advocating for to help decrease homelessness and improve mental health.
They cover emergency housing, transportation, the benefits cliff, practitioner reformer and crisis intervention.
One of those areas that could see action taken on is transportation.
"We were advocating for nonemergency transportation through Uber and Lyft and those kinds of things because transportation is a disaster here," DeSalvo said. "A lot of our folks weren't able to take the hour-and-a-half bus ride to get to the community service provider to be seen and they were missing appointments. Then they were coming back to us saying 'what gives?' and it's like, well, they're not being seen on-site. They're having a difficult time navigating the bus route. We don't have another transportation avenue, and neither did they."
It turned out that was an idea being pursued already by Rep. Aaron Pilkington, R-Knoxville.
Pilkington, who is vice president of strategic communications at ARCares, filed a bill on Nov. 18 addressing the issue.
House Bill 1009 would have the Department of Human Services create a "Non-emergency Transportation Ride share Expansion Study Work Group."
The work group would examine the need for expanded ride share services to health care facilities for Medicaid beneficiaries and the benefits of using ride share services verses traditional nonemergency transportation providers.
The bill passed both the House and Senate and was sent to Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders' office on April 5.
Any actual program that would come of it would be a revival of a pilot program that Pilkington was behind in Pulaski County that was shut down when the covid-19 pandemic hit.
"We're just looking for different ways to fix the nonemergency transportation issue in Arkansas and I would say it's a national issue," Pilkington said. "It's not an issue that is unique to Arkansas. I'm actually hoping that Arkansas can become a model for other states to follow, especially rural states. Larger areas can do buses or public transportation and try to find ways to kind of reimburse patients on Medicaid through that, but we don't really have that infrastructure. So ride sharing to me seems like the best way to do it."
It's an issue Tucker agrees with Pilkington on.
"I think a lot of people assume that anyone can just get where they need to go," Tucker said. "That's not the case for a lot of people in need, not even close and if we can make transportation available for people, that increases their mobility, not just physically, but their ability to mobilize themselves upward, oftentimes out of poverty because they can get to work, they can get to school. They can get where they need to go to get their lives back on track."
BENEFITS 'CLIFF'
Pilkington admitted his bill wasn't "controversial."
That can't be said about other issues DeSalvo and Mockabee hope to address, like the benefits cliff.
According to CATCH, a single mother of two children in Arkansas will experience a significant "cliff" if she earns around $15.50 per hour. Earning just 25 cents more per hour -- for $500 annually -- could result in a net loss of benefits of up to $8,000 a year.
CATCH is advocating for creating a sliding scale for benefits, to help working parents "acclimate" to a change in wages/benefits, said Mockabee.
"Most people who are making those decisions, they never lived that, they don't know somebody who's had to live with that," Mockabee said. "But when you're faced with that reality of 'if I get a raise, I lose my child care and I can't afford to pay the child care even with that raise,' what's that incentive for people to continue to grow their income?"
An issue like this is one they have encountered a "philosophical difference" on, said DeSalvo.
"The philosophical difference just being, [people who argue] 'you just need to get a job or you need to work harder,' rather than taking into account the story, like trauma, mental illness, substance use," DeSalvo said. "Meeting people where they are and like we've talked about what the benefits cliff, this is where the philosophical difference really comes into play is incentivizing people to go back to work and to do some of these things to get off the money [and] not be dependent on the government."
The Salvation Army is primarily a faith-based organization. And in the south, being based in "faith" could be viewed as being on specific end of the political spectrum.
DeSalvo shared how he navigates those waters.
"I really found myself not necessarily speaking about all those things on the [CATCH flyer], but really speaking to the big picture about how this overall helps our state and how this takes the numbers where we finish, 50th, 48th and 49th, how we can inch ourselves closer towards the middle of the pack to start. So it really is interesting for me to walk through given all the hats that I wear," DeSalvo said. "I don't want to make it about 'red believes this' and 'blue believes that.'
"Our pitch is we believe in people and we want to be aligned with the people who believe in helping people, just [on a] big picture [level], because if we get caught in the minutiae, then I'm not being apolitical and I can no longer be a part of this."
Tucker said he hopes "that some of the ideas that the Salvation Army is throwing out there continue to be part of that discussion so that we can try to build some more headway on those issues before the next session."
WHAT'S NEXT?
After first wading into the pool of government advocacy, where do the men from the Salvation Army, as well as the others who are part of CATCH, go from here 18 months before the next legislative session?
DeSalvo said there has been discussions about education for service providers, but also an emphasis on coordinated efforts, making sure "that we've got people on board and we can really go as a coalition to speak together. ...
"More so than anything that we're communicating beforehand, because I don't know how familiar you are with the legislative sessions. Most stuff is decided before they ever get to committee. And we have to figure out how we can get in that ballgame. And how we can get some of this done before we get to that point. Because most of the stuff is already decided and the agenda is the agenda. We need to figure out how we get on the pre-agenda."
DeSalvo later referred to all the issues on the flyer it has been circulating.
"It just necessarily isn't like the group there from CATCH [is] doing all of that just yet, but that's our goal," DeSalvo said. "That's one of our priorities for CATCH is just make sure we become a big part of that and that our voice is heard, because then the voices of the people that we serve would be heard."