Human Services

In 1997, the City and County collaborated to form the Community Human Service Partnership (CHSP), which was granted a best practice award by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The overall purpose of the partnership is to provide a more efficient and effective method for allocating human services grant funds. Prior to CHSP, the City and County conducted separate grant review processes, resulting in agencies having to apply to two different processes. Furthermore, recognizing the need to make improvements in the overall approach to funding human services, CHSP was formed to address various systems’ challenges that resulted due to the lack of coordination among the local funding entities. This initiative, which requires greater coordination and cooperation between funding partners and agencies, affords easy recognition of duplication and gaps in service delivery and provides the ability to target funds accordingly.

Services and Programs

The CHSP grant process requires agencies to submit funding proposals that address at least one of the ten following human service categories:

Team One: Children's Services

Direct client services provided to children from infancy through elementary school. Brain development is most rapid during the early childhood years and sets the stage for learning and development later in life. Providing quality early childhood intervention, including education support, helps children develop essential skills to reach their greatest potential.

Team Two: Community Support Services

Direct client services provided to the community at large. Programs in this category serve as a community safety net by providing supportive services such as information and referrals, rape and crisis intervention, legal assistance, literacy, substance abuse treatment, technology accessibility, and employment and training for adults.

Team Three: Services for Persons with Disabilities

Direct client services provided to persons who have a temporary or permanent disability. These services assist people diagnosed with a disability attributable to an intellectual, psychiatric, cognitive, neurological, sensory, physical, or medical impairment. Services include help with special needs, social development activities, assistance with medical equipment and supplies, therapeutic interventions, and accessibility and independent living support such as ramps and visual aids.

Team Four: Basic Needs and Emergency Services

Direct client services providing relief for essential and emergency needs. Overall, services in this category help individuals and families meet their most critical needs, including responding to crisis situations such as home fires. These services include emergency and transitional housing, food, baby formula, clothing, rental and utility assistance, household supplies, and disaster relief. In addition to helping individuals and families meet their immediate needs, these services also help clients develop life management skills to achieve self-sufficiency and improve their quality of life.

Team Five: Family Support Services

Direct client services provided primarily to families in an outpatient setting or within a family-focused residential setting, as opposed to serving individuals. Family support services address the safety and well-being of children and families.

• Assist at-risk families during crisis reach stabilization and self-sufficiency.
• Provide interventions to reduce family dysfunction, including family violence, detachment, poor parenting, and isolation.
• Assist families in meeting their basic needs such as obtaining safe, affordable housing.
• Provide housing and supportive services to pregnant women who are homeless or at risk of homelessness and poor pregnancy outcomes.
• Help families learn life management skills, including budgeting and how to access community resources.
• Provide counseling and other interventions to strengthen the individuals in the family and the family unit.
• Provide long-term shelter to youth and young adults in a homelike setting (e.g., foster group homes and transitional living).

Team Six: Physical Health Services

Direct client services provided to individuals, families, or the community at large, either for general health or for specific health-related conditions.

• Conduct testing and assessments to identify client risk factors and medical conditions.
• Educate and assist patients in navigating the complex medical care system, including accessing resources and services.
• Promote wellness to prevent medical conditions, including the spread of contagious diseases.
• Promote the early identification of medical conditions and provide appropriate treatment.
• Assist persons in effectively managing chronic, long-term health conditions as well as end of life planning.
• Improve health outcomes and the quality of life for persons who otherwise may not get the medical or dental care they require.

Team Seven: Senior Services

Direct client services provided to seniors. These services promote physical, emotional, cognitive, and social functions of seniors at risk of chronic health conditions, poverty, or social isolation. Services in this category include assisting seniors with managing a disability, daily living, health and safety, basic needs, in-home care, nutrition, social involvement, and end of life planning. In addition, these services include caregiver supportive services such as respite care for persons diagnosed with Alzheimer's and related dementia disorders.

Team Eight: Youth Recreation, Character Building and Mentorship Services

Direct client services targeting middle school through high school age youth, with an emphasis on cultivating the youth's social, physical, emotional, and behavioral development. The goal of positive youth development is to build and strengthen assets that enable youth to grow and flourish throughout life.

Services in this category enable youth to minimize risk factors and enhance protective factors that lead to successful life outcomes. Risk factors affecting youth include but are not limited to the following: the availability of drugs, gang activity, low neighborhood attachment and community disorganization, lack of parental involvement, family conflict, early and persistent antisocial behavior, and economic deprivation. Healthy family attachment, positive peer interaction, prosocial involvement, and educational achievement are some of the protective factors that increase the likelihood of positive youth outcomes. Effective programs in this category focus on life management skills, anger and stress control, critical thinking and responsible decision-making, delayed gratification and long-range planning, substance abuse resistance skills, self-esteem building, community involvement, caring mentorship relationships, self-protection skills, and positive learning opportunities.

Team Nine: Youth Education, Employment and Training

Direct client services targeting middle school through high school age youth, with a focus on academic performance, career exploration, social development, employment and training, and job placement. To help youth reach their academic and career potential, programs in this category also holistically address the needs of the youth by minimizing barriers that impede success and strengthening the protector factors that lead to successful outcomes.

Effective programs in this category focus on tutoring, mentoring, life management skills, supportive learning environments, assessment and testing, individualized learning, soft (personal qualities that translate to good job performance) and technical skill development and training, job placement, career exploration, apprenticeships, and higher learning opportunities. Successful outcomes include being promoted to the next grade level, passing Florida academic standards, obtaining a high school diploma or GED, completing a technical training program, or being admitted to a postsecondary education program.

Team Ten: Promise Zone Services

The City and Leon County seek to fund innovative, community-based, culturally relevant programs that can directly improve the lives of residents living in the Promise Zone. Programs funded in this category must serve residents in the census tracts that define the Promise Zone. All eligible applicants must demonstrate the provision of direct client services in at least one of the following human service categories: 1) Youth Services, 2) Family Services, 3) Employment, Training and Placement Services, and 4) Health Services.

What is CHSP?

The goal of the CHSP funding process is to review agency capacity and performance; match requests for program funding to community needs; and distribute the available funds to assure a balanced, effective, and efficient human services delivery system.

CHSP objectives include:

1. Ensure that a majority of CHSP funds are used to provide direct client services to the lowest socioeconomic areas where the most difficult social conditions exist.
2. Through the Citizens Review Teams, ensure that 100% of the funds are allocated towards the areas of greatest need and opportunity.
3. Support and maintain the optimal level of human services possible with the amount of resources available.
4. Provide a service delivery system that best matches identified community needs.
5. Target spending of CHSP funds towards a long-range perspective, which incorporates changing needs and trends relative to how needs should be met.
6. Provide a means for an ongoing review of the program and the financial needs of agencies participating in the CHSP process through program monitoring.
7. Provide a method for measuring the cost and effectiveness of the programs addressing multiple community needs.
8. Use CHSP funds to complement and supplement the agencies' budgets for the provision of comprehensive services, including all tax-supported and voluntary agency activities.
9. Ensure that funds are distributed to human services agencies without unnecessarily duplicating program funding at the expense of others.
10. Eliminate duplicate preparation of applications, reviews, or interviews by agencies.
11. Maximize the level of state and federal funds coming into the community through match opportunities.
12. Provide a forum for information sharing and an opportunity to find common ground in defining terms, goals, and objectives.
13. Ensure that CHSP funded agencies adhere to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) standards of accounting for nonprofits.

The City and County work collectively through a governing body made up of representatives from each partner's organization. This partnership utilizes a joint staff and community volunteers to implement the grant distribution process, resulting in funding recommendations that translate into a more comprehensive service delivery system.

Agencies providing direct human services to City of Tallahassee and Leon County residents may apply for funding to support a specific program. Funding is allocated through a grant review process that utilizes a team of citizen volunteers to review, rank, and award funding to applicant agencies; the team is referred to as the Citizens Review Team (CRT). Volunteers are solicited through partnerships with neighborhood associations, local universities, area businesses, churches, civic groups, and professional associations, among others. Extensive efforts are made to ensure that each Citizens Review Team is representative of the community's demographics. Individuals who participate as volunteer grant reviewers must attend training facilitated by the joint staff of the respective CHSP partners.

Human Services Staff

Patricia Holliday ~ Human Services Administrator
Anita Morrell ~ Coordinator of Special Projects
Sarala Hermes ~ Human Services Analyst
Virginia Kyllonen ~ Administrative Specialist I