What can we DU now to help TTW and Yoshi ?

[daredtowork]

375. It might depend on where you live

When you say "fall through the cracks", you seem to have a fairly one-way time-line in mind: people stop working, lose their housing, become street people, and at some point die. You are working with the homeless, so wherever you are, there must be no hope of recovery from that condition.

I live in an area with a fairly large "homeless industry" (which many people complain about) that attempts to help people get their life back together. Experiments in "Housing First" all over the country have shown when you give homeless people a stable place to live, they soon start to look "more human" again - which changes how other people interact with them. This can be the first step toward rebuilding their lives, including getting a regular job. Much of the time, however, they are homeless because they should have been on SSI in the first place (because of mental illness). Even once a person gets some stable benefit such as SSI they can , and still often do, work: the benefit money is very little and the terms and support services strongly encourage people to work as well as socialize.

I'm not sure you have a good idea of what case management can involve. It's not just help finding out what resources you qualify for. It's structured time in which someone goes over your schedule, makes sure you are keeping your appointments, taking your medication, paying your bills, meeting your obligations, and setting reasonable goals for yourself. A good case manager will help you set long term as well as short term goals and will include social as well as job goals so you won't feel like a slave to the system. The only thing that sucks as 10 hours a week with a case manager is 10 hours a week in which you could be working. In some ways this is a lot more useful (in terms of getting one's life back in order) than a psychologist.