Focus on Home Inc.

PROJECT PURPOSE

Our program ?Ending ?Home?lessness In Our Community? is our yearly project to serve families in the Oklahoma City Metro area. Our program provides furniture and home furnishings to families who are struggling to create a livable home due to homelessness and other factors. Our program is centered around a "move-in" which consists of a group of volunteers arriving at our warehouse and meeting with their family coordinator (who previously met with the family to determine specific needs), they select the different furniture pieces and furnishings, load the items in our box truck and then head over to the family's home. Once they arrive and greet the family they will begin unloading the selected items. Once everything is unloaded the volunteers will work to set the home up. This includes setting up all beds, hanging curtain rods and curtains, hanging artwork, putting away dishes and silverware - making the house a home for the family. This allows families to focus more on having family meals and helping their kids with homework and less on where they will lay their heads to sleep at night.

EVIDENCE

When founding Focus on Home we knew we needed a strong vetting system, we achieved this by partnering with other nonprofit agencies in the metro like ReMerge, YWCA, Palomar and HopeHouseOKC. We rely on their programs and caseworkers to refer families to us who are most in need and most likely to benefit from our services. By doing this we have become part of a wrap-around service for families who are working hard to become independent but lack the financial means to create a livable home. The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly increased the need for our services as many more people have lost their jobs, fell below the poverty line and/or lost housing due to eviction or foreclosure. Additionally, there has been a rise in substance abuse, domestic violence and homelessness due to the pandemic. We are frequently approached by other local agencies to form partnerships to serve the families and individuals in their programs, but due to COVID (increased need and decrease in funding) we have not been able to make as many new partnerships as we would like.

POPULATION DESCRIPTION

Families served by Focus on Home come from a variety of unfortunate situations. Some are transitioning out of homelessness, some are headed by women escaping violence and others struggle to be reunited with their children, after addictions and other challenges have separated parents from their children. The majority of families we serve are single mothers from minority communities. They are generally unskilled workers and have multiple children who were trying to balance working while also trying to help their children with distance learning during the pandemic.

PERFORMANCE MEASURING

We follow-up with each family three months after our services are completed. A Focus on Home volunteer calls each family we have worked with and discusses their growth and stability. We will be able to collect any programmatic data during our intake process or during our follow-up process. Additionally, the feelings of safety, security and stability that we strive to provide to the families we serve cannot be easily measured, but they certainly drive our organization.

ONGOING INVESTMENT AMOUNT

$

ONGOING INVESTMENT DESCRIPTION

None

ONGOING INVESTMENT REQUIRED

Able to continue operation without additional funding from the State of Oklahoma