Chattanooga families that want to get on their feet should be breaking down the door to the city's new Office of Family Empowerment, which works to help them move from dependency to self-sufficiency.
The former Social Services Division of the city's Department of Youth & Family Development, in the last five years, has moved away from solely filling immediate needs to a case management model that partners with a variety of local agencies to help families move toward long-term stability.
We have long appreciated the adage that if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. But teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.
For too many years, federal, state and local governments moved seemingly inexorably toward the give-a-man-a-fish model. Such models create dependency, grow it, embed it and recycle it for generations.
Lurone Jennings, administrator of the Department of Youth & Family Development, said that model won't help eliminate poverty in families.
The Office of Family Empowerment, he said, "offers more wraparound services to help bring them out of poverty so they won't keep repeating the cycle of needing help."
Over the last six months, using Community Service Block Grant funds from the state, the office has upgraded and improved the programs the Social Services Division had been using. It also has partnered with, among other agencies, banks (for offering money management education and developing Family Empowerment Plans), the United Way of Greater Chattanooga and the Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga (for providing early learning assistance and educational scholarships), First Things First (for providing family and life skills training), and Chattanooga State Community College and Tennessee College of Applied Technology (for providing vocational and technical training).
Rachel Howard, director of the Office of Family Empowerment, said the partnership model has paid off. Where 79 families became self-sufficient over a six-month period in 2016, 142 families became self-sufficient in 2017.
The local office, to secure the block grant funds, uses a state model to gauge self-sufficiency. Families are scored based on their education level and their ability to provide child care and adequate food. Families eligible for the Family Empowerment program must have an income of less than 125 percent of the federal poverty line and are asked to commit to the program for two years (but can finish sooner).
"It's for people who truly want to be empowered and take control of their economic future," Howard said.
We believe that should be anyone eligible. Nothing less than a life of self-sufficiency depends on it.