TRAVELERS AID SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA
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Mission Statement
Families Forward Philadelphia’s mission is to help families experiencing homelessness become healthy, productive, and self-reliant. We treat all members of the family with dignity and respect; help them recover from the effects of homelessness; and assist parents in obtaining and maintaining permanent housing.
About This Cause
Families Forward Philadelphia (Families Forward), formerly known as Travelers Aid Society of Philadelphia, operates the city’s largest emergency shelter for families experiencing homelessness, serving 65 families nightly, as well as maintaining 75 transitional and permanent supportive family housing units in Philadelphia. Families Forward’s mission is to help families experiencing homelessness become healthy, productive, and self-reliant. We work to achieve this mission daily by providing shelter, housing, personalized case management, workforce development, education initiatives, and agency supports such as food, clothing, assistance obtaining identification, rental subsidies, transpiration assistance, educational supplies, school uniforms, and much more. In so doing, Families Forward plays an important role in offering a pathway out of poverty and homelessness in Philadelphia, supporting an average of over 200 families annually across our programs, including over 400 children. What makes us effective in helping families lift themselves out of homelessness is our approach to comprehensive supportive services that complement physical shelter and housing. We think of our supportive services in four buckets: case management, workforce development, education, and agency supports--these buckets represent needs of our families that are not otherwise being met and must be addressed in achieving self-sufficiency. Case management is focused on building healthy and meaningful relationships with the families we serve, encouraging them to be open with us in expressing their needs; it is creating a personalized road map for income and housing stability. Workforce development is focused on life skills, resume development, job searches, and interview prep, with the goal of securing job skills and employment that lead to increased income. Education is focused on both the children and parents in our care, including connections to adult education programs, in-school supports, inter-generational learning, uniform assistance, tutoring, and more. Agency supports focus on meeting basic needs such as food, clothing, toiletries, identification documents, educational supplies, transportation assistance, rent subsidies, health and wellness, home furnishings, savings program, and creating an overall expectation of exemplary hospitality for families while they are in our care. As an organization, we believe in working with the entire family, not just the head of household, to ensure that individual goals and family unit goals are achieved synergistically. To do so, it is imperative that we keep families together; relationships are key and remain a primary focus of the organization’s work. We strive with commitment to build trust, not just provide transactional service. Yes, housing affects almost everything, but simply providing vulnerable families housing is not enough—we value relationships and understand the necessity of providing supportive services that help families meet their basic, educational, workforce, and well-being needs. Considering the plethora of data and research on the subject of homelessness, we acknowledge that there is no one magic formula to help families lift themselves out of homelessness. Rather, what remains paramount is a nimble and flexible approach to service delivery that acknowledges the uniqueness of each family’s situation and subsequently values a custom approach to meeting their diverse needs, even as those needs evolve over time. At Families Forward, the idea of "What's Next" is always on our minds, particularly thinking about what's next for the families we serve. How do we help them increase their incomes? How do we best support them in their efforts to secure long-term, stable housing? How do we continue to offer vital education supports to children and adults alike? As an organization, we're a "What's Next kind of family," in that everything we do is focused on helping those around us achieve What's Next for them. Our service model centers on hospitality and kindness, and what fuels our mission is a deep and heartfelt belief in each person we interact with. A focus on being a "What’s Next kind of family” is also our resilience philosophy—we don’t let challenges get us down because we will continue to fight for What’s Next no matter what. The majority of our budget is funded by government contracts, which are restrictive and only fund the physical shelter and housing aspects of the work we do. Critical supportive services--case management, workforce development, education, agency supports--are only possible through private philanthropy. Supportive services truly make a difference in the lives of the families we serve; they build independence, help individuals access opportunities, and ultimately lead to positive housing moves out of shelter. Moreover, charitable gifts allow us to be responsive in meeting the diverse and changing needs of the families we serve (spending based on observed needs), making it possible for us to operate beyond the restrictions of our stagnant and decreasing government funding.