Veteran Street Card

We have published the updated Veterans Street Card this month.  With the new funding for ending homelessness among veterans a great deal has changed over the last year.  The new Veteran's Steet Card includes the 1-800 number for those need help.  There is the new Family Services grant for Mental Health Services and the new Central Resource Center that opened for Veterans are all on the new Street Card.  Feel free to print out the Street Card and make as many copies as you want.

For More Information Go Here....
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New Street Card Available

The new Street Card was updated and printed.  It is now available on the streets for distribution.  In case you have not seen it before, it is a one page (front and back) with all the services available to homeless people on a walk in basis.  This has all the shelters, daily or weekly meal programs, housing services, legal assistance and counseling help available in Cuyahoga County.  We will have the new version on the website this week as we update our new site.  Right now, you can pick the Street Card at our office or at many of the local social services.  Thanks to University Hospitals for printing the 10,000 copies of the Street Card.   We will be distributing these at Homeless Stand Down next week and throughout the next month to Police Stations, Libraries, social service providers and hospitals.  We will have them available to print from our website in the next week.

Brian
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New School Children Resource Available

What to Do If You Are In Danger of Becoming Homeless While in School?

The state and federal government have clear and unequivocal rules for protecting a child's education. The goal is to get a child situated within 24 hours after becoming homeless with a preference for maintaining their school life unbroken. So, whenever possible, advocates try to keep the child in the school they were attending before their guardian became homeless. The State of Ohio Department of Education enforces these rules, and will make sure that school districts don't try to enforce an arbitrary residency rule on homeless children.

Thanks to our new VISTA, Holly, we have updated the list of contacts from each school district in Cuyahoga County. As the new school year begins, we have posted the 2010-2011 list of homeless liaisons within each school district in Cuyahoga County. With the passage of No Child
Left Behind each district in the United States had to appoint one school official who could help children who may be experiencing homelessness. These liaisons can help identify resources within the community for homeless children, and will help set up transportation back to their school of origin. So, lets say a child's family becomes homeless in October while the child was attending Maple Hts. elementary school, they could search our list and find the district's contact. This district official would help the child pay for transportation from the Harbor Light shelter in Cleveland back to Maple Hts. school every day. They could help with tutoring assistance or printing a family street card from our website to help the household stay together during their stay in the shelters.

Brian
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Street Cards Published

All Street Cards Updated and Posted

Thanks to MetroHealth Hospital for printing the 2010 version of the Street Card. It is out now, and available on the NEOCH website. We are working to distribute them throughout the system. This is the eighteenth year of updating the Street Card in Cleveland. Every year one of the hospital systems agrees to printing the card. We distribute 10,000 to schools, libraries, police stations and social service providers. Many print the Street Card directly from our website. This is the most popular page of our website by far, and people are free to download the Street Card and make copies and distribute themselves. For those who are not aware the Street Card is a free resource guide for those in need of help. It lists all the services available in the community that a person can access directly from the streets (no referral necessary). It lists only weekly food sites. New this year is some help with obtaining identification. I saw a section on ID on one of the street cards from another city in the United States and decided that we need something similar. If you are visiting a store with some fraudulent women holding a street card asking for a donation, don't be fooled. They are scammers. Don't give them money.

A few months back, NEOCH announced that we were creating a special Street Card to serve families. Thanks to the internship of CWRU student, Joe Baum, we were able to publish this Street Card last week. We were seeking donations to help with this project, and about 20 people responded. Thanks also to the Dominion Foundation who saw this project and stepped forward to get it done. They are helping with the printing and the distribution of this Family Street Card. It is available on our website here. The Family Street Card is tailored more to homeless children and their parents. It lists childcare options, foreclosure assistance, and contacts at local school districts for families struggling with housing. We will begin to distribute the Family Street Card throughout the community this fall.

In addition, both the Veterans Street Card and the East Cleveland Street Card were updated and are available on our website. For case workers who work with these individuals, these are invaluable resources. Please feel free to download any or all of these Street Cards and distribute them to people in need.

Brian
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New Resources on the Website

Veteran's Street Card and Legal Schedule Updated

The Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless updated our website with the new Veteran's Street Card for 2010. Our website features the regular Street Card from 2009 and the 2010 East Cleveland Street Card. We are working on getting the Street Card printed. In addition, we are working on a Family Street Card to assist families that are experiencing problems with their housing. These should both be updated by the end of the summer.

In addition, the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association in partnership with NEOCH have added an additional clinic to the schedule for 2010. We have found attorneys who will staff the clinic at Trinity Cathedral beginning in August 2010. This clinic will offer legal advice to those who are in danger of being homeless or who are currently homeless on the third Wednesday of the month. The updated legal schedule is now on the website for distribution.

Brian
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Print Out or Pick Up Street Card

2009 Street Card Now Available at Shelters

The Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless (NEOCH) has updated its Street Card for the seventeenth year in a row. The Street Card is a valuable resource for homeless people. It contains extensive, up-to-date information on resources such as shelters, meal sites, job training agencies, health clinics, chemical dependency services and other assistance programs. The bus routes are listed to get to some of these services, and the Street Card lists all the services a person experiencing homelessness can access right from the streets.

“Many newly homeless individuals have no idea where to go for help,” said Everett Brown, an AmeriCorps*VISTA serving with NEOCH. “The Street Card is an important resource directory that we regularly update. It acts as a map of accessible city and county services that every homeless person can use everyday.”

This past two weeks, NEOCH distributed 2,000 Street Cards to individuals, shelters and other agencies. “The Coalition wants to thank the Cleveland Clinic for printing the Street Card this year,” said Brown. He added, “We could never do this without our healthcare partners.” Even though most panhandlers are not homeless, Street Cards can be given away to panhandlers as an alternative to handing over money. NEOCH encourages people to make as many copies possible and distribute to those in need. The newest edition of the Street Card can be downloaded for free at http://www.neoch.org under Resources/Street Card. NEOCH can mail a few copies by calling 216/432.0540.

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Veterans Street Card Available

Photo by Cheryl Jones of the NEOCH Photo Project. Call NEOCH if you want a print.

Homeless Veterans Street Card Available on the NEOCH Website

We have updated the Street Card dedicated to the services for Veterans in Cleveland. This is an 8.5 inch by 11 inch double sided piece of paper with all the information that you might need if you became homeless in Cleveland. Please feel feel to print and distribute the Veterans Street Card as much as you want.

Speaking of the website...

1. The Homeless Legal Assistance Clinic has been updated.
2. We have added a section on the Movable Wall exhibit that is available to educate the public about homelessness.
3. We added the new regular Street Card to the site.
   
4. The About Us section has been updated for accuracy.
   
5. We added a report on the Voting activities from the 2008 election. We will blog about this in the future.
6. There is a better search function on the site.
   
7. Finally, we added our 2008 Annual Report and some of the items from the report to various sections of the site.
   

Tell us what you think, and what we should add. We have an intern this summer working on the site. Daniel from CSU has been great at improving the site. What do you think?

Brian
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Updated Street Card Available

New Street Card on the Website

We have a new intern, Daniel, who has begun updating our website. The first order of business was to put the new Street Card on the site. This is the 2009 updated version of our popular Street Card. At this point, we only have an electronic version of the card. We are hoping that the Cleveland Clinic will print this year's version of the card. For the past 18 years, we have made the Street Card available to homeless people and homeless service providers. This two page 8.5 inch by 14 inch piece of paper has all of the services available to homeless people right off the streets in Cuyahoga County. We also have a Veteran's Street Card and an East Cleveland Street Card available on the website. Feel free to download the Street Card, and make as many copies as you need.

Brian
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